


Three Lives, Three loves, One Face

by these_dreams_go_on



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Bellamy and Madi bonding, Clarke Lives, F/M, Gen, Minor Bellamy Blake/Echo, No Echo bashing, Nobody we know dies, Season 6 Speculation, Slow Bellarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2020-03-07 18:23:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18878719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/these_dreams_go_on/pseuds/these_dreams_go_on
Summary: From season 6 speculation regarding Josephine and Clarke.Russell Lightbourne chips Clarke, turning her into Josephine Lightbourne, but he underestimated just how strong Clarke Griffin is and everyone has to live with the consequences.





	1. Chapter 1

Josephine Lightbourne hadn’t believed in Hell until _after_ she’d died.

Which was the equivalent of shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted.

But as the daughter of two scientists and being one herself, she had known that the universe had been all there is, no great deity snapping his fingers or bringing everything into creation, the Big Bang and evolution had done that.

So, when she’d died with her father’s bullet tearing apart her body, she’d known that was it, no more Sanctum, no more Gabriel, no more living.

Until she’d woken up in Hell.

* * *

 

_She’d found herself running, stumbling across ashen terrain as a wall of fire roared towards her, falling down and cracking the helmet of her suit. Reaching safety, closing a door behind her only to start choking on her own blood._

_Three days she spent in agony, blisters bursting across her skin, oozing blood and pus when they became infected, unable to move, barely able to open her eyes, forced to lap at her blood on the floor so she wouldn’t die from dehydration._

_She didn’t know where she was, she barely remembered who she was, only counting the passage of time from the automated lights overhead. When it became too much, too much pain, too much suffering, just too much…she closed her eyes and surrendered._

* * *

_She wakes to the sensation of something warm running over her hand._

_Night has fallen, fire-torches are flickering in her peripheral vision, the grass under her is damp, kicked up and smells like Earth._

_The blood on her hand is red._

_When she looks up, she’s inches away from a body._

_A person she’s killed._

_The boy is young, floppy, brunette hair and a clean jaw._

_There’s a stain on his t-shirt from where she stabbed him with a knife, killing him, taking his life._

_In the distance, someone who must have loved him screams in agony._

_And she can only drop the knife, horrified because she now knows that this isn’t her first murder._

_And it won’t be her last._

_But she doesn’t want this, she doesn’t want to be this person._

_She runs her hands through her hair, digging into her skull as her legs give out under her._

_She squeezes her eyes shut and surrenders._

* * *

_A literal mountain filled with innocents and she poisons them all._

_She learns the smell of flesh when it melts off bones and puddles on the floor and she surrenders._

_A good man, a righteous man is forced out of an airlock, he dies with a silent scream, his body destined to freeze and crack as it floats in space for eternity and she surrenders._

_The woman she loves dies choking on black blood because of a bullet that was meant for her and with her dies her people’s chance of peace and sick with the knowledge that_ _she’s failed them, she surrenders._

_Tears of blood, fevers that made them vomit blood, faecal matter stained with it, so much red blood and she doesn’t know how to cure them and she’s dying herself anyway, so she surrenders._

_An innocent boy whose body has been destroyed by acidic fog begs for death and she’s the only one able to do this, to slice into his neck with some sort of shiv. She doesn’t want to be this person, so she surrenders._

_Her best friend dies alone, and she doesn’t even realise that he’s missing until they find his chilled corpse, rigor mortis having set in and his clothes are soiled from the bowel and bladder having released themselves._

_She surrenders._

_Her friends see her for the monster that she is._

_She surrenders._

_The man she loves leaves and never comes back to her._

_She surrenders._

_Her mother becomes weak with despair and drugs._

_She surrenders._

_She destroys the world._

_She surrenders._

* * *

 

She surrenders until all that is left is a cave with a small fire crackling away and a rucksack tucked behind a rock.

A woman with blood red hair, cruel eyes, a dirty face and bared teeth enters, laughing at her.

“Weak little Josephine…” she sneers, “I was still a child with _half_ your learning, _half_ your skills and when I faced these horrors and I overcame them all. But you…you couldn’t even survive the _memories_.”

She staggers back, hitting a wall and wishes she could disappear into the rocks.

“What are you?!” she demands, even as a tiny part of her tries to argue that demons, that monsters aren’t real.

Not fairy tale ones anyway.

The woman chuckles, “If only we had a mirror.”

  
A mirror?

Why would Josephine need a mirror?

Unless…she _wasn’t_ …

The woman has stopped paying her attention, has moved to her rucksack and is rifling through it, settling something metal that lands with a dull thud on the dirt.

Cautiously, she pulls her shaking hands from the rock and lifts them slowly, feeling as though the limbs weigh a ton. When she first presses them against her face, she doesn’t recognise the sensation and has to remind herself that she is examining her own features.

Except they’re not her own.

This face is rounder than hers, the nose is the wrong shape, the eyes are too big, and the bone structure is less defined.

She tilts her chin down to see the rest of her body and finds her view obscured by her chest.

 _Those_ are definitely not hers.

  
“Her name is Clarke Griffin.” The woman explains, pouring a liquid into a metal cup.

“What did you do to me?” Josephine demands, “Why am I wearing her face?”

  
The woman stands and moves towards her, causing her to stagger back against the wall.

  
“ _I_ didn’t do anything!” she snapped, “Your father tricked her, promised her people a home on Sanctum and then demanded her body as the payment.”

  
Josephine flinches at the insinuation behind that statement but the woman doesn’t appear to have meant that at least.

  
“ _My_ father wouldn’t do that!” she argues instinctively, remembering the proud, kind man who’d been her father before that final day on Sanctum.

“The same father who shot you and then blamed Gabriel for his crimes?” the woman queries sarcastically, holding the cup between her two hands,

“No, why would a man like that force a woman to be a host for his daughter’s consciousness?”

  
If her father had found a way to bring her back…to bring them all back…

But not this way?

  
Everything she had known is shattering around her, her very understanding of the world.

“You said he tricked her?” she asks, her voice quiet now and she struggles to say the words, but the woman hears her,

“He promised that she would be the only one of her people he would do this to, and then he went back on his word, he found out that her daughter was a nightblood and decided to chip her too.”

“Which is why I’m here,” the woman explains, sighing, “Because Clarke knows that this isn’t your fault, that you’re not to blame and don’t deserve to suffer for your father’s crimes…but she also knows what needs to be done.”

  
The woman hands her the cup and Josephine only takes it after swearing to herself that she wouldn’t drink whatever was inside. She might not know how to survive this hell, but she sure as anything isn’t stupid enough to drink poison.

Except that the cup is filled to the brink and when the woman doesn’t prompt Josephine to drink, she figures out what she’d intended.

In lieu of a mirror, she’d offered her the only reflective surface on hand.

Of course, it’s still dark and Josephine can only catch a glimpse, but the glimpse is enough.

  
“I’m wearing your face…” she murmurs, handing the cup back to the woman only for her to toss it aside, the water spilling across the ground.

“ _You’re_ Clarke Griffin.” Josephine prompts but the woman shakes her dreadlocked hair,

“No, Clarke Griffin lives in sunlight and raises a child in peace and happiness for six years. I am Wanheda, I am the one who burns people alive, who levels mountains, who locks people out of bunkers and leaves them to die from the radiation. I am the one who takes their peace and turns it into pain. I am the Commander of Death.”

She reaches up and Josephine flinches back, but she only cups her face gently,

“I pity you, Josephine, but your father threatened Clarke’s daughter and the man she loves…I can’t allow that to go unpunished.”

  
Josephine took self-defence classes in high school, most girls did, but she’s in no way prepared when Wanheda’s hand drops to her neck, the other joining it and applying pressure. Panic sets in and she thrashes violently to throw her off and nearly succeeds when she drops to the ground, gasping in a lungful of air and trying to scramble away only for Wanheda to throw herself onto her back and knock her down.

She tries to get up but can’t. Her nose is pressing against the hard rock and she hears something snap before her mouth fills with blood. She can’t see, she can’t move, she can’t breathe.

Above her, Wanheda laughs and presses her mouth to her ear.

“I am going to make your father wish he’d blown his own brains out all those centuries ago.”

She can’t fight, she can’t do anything.

Except surrender.

* * *

 

“We have to make them surrender!” Bellamy cried, trying to make his voice heard over the howling wind.

A few feet away, Xavier rolls his eyes but he’s not the one calling the shots.

“Don’t worry,” Diyoza groans, reaching his side and leaning back against the tree,

“I was there this morning…she made it clear no red bloods were going to be killed.”

Two centuries pregnant and Bellamy would stake whatever possession he had left that Charmaine Diyoza would be going into labour before the end of the day.

They had been in Sanctum two days before it had all gone to hell.

The Primes had taken Clarke from him, from _them_.

They’d put a chip in her head and called her Josephine, made her into a Princess who wore short dresses and sauntered about the palace, spouting quotes in long dead languages and eyeing people with pity for not understanding her. Josephine who’d flirted with Jordan and had actually expected to be comforted when he’d upset her by explaining that she had stolen their friend’s body.

Josephine who’d looked at Madi without a hint of recognition in her eyes, who had told Russell Lightbourne that there was no way Clarke would be the only one among them with black blood and suggested they all be tested.

Josephine who was the reason that they’d had to flee Sanctum, the reason Raven had broken her good leg climbing the tower to hack the radiation dome, the reason Emori had taken a bullet to her shoulder and the reason that Jackson and Abby had been captured.

He didn’t even know what Josephine really looked like but he hated her as he’d never hated anyone before.

Not even Thelonious Jaha.

  
They’d been in the forest for three hours before Octavia and Diyoza had found them, the two women having been trapped on the other side of the Dome and taking shelter in a cave while they’d tried to figure out what exactly was safe to eat and drink on the moon.

Bellamy had prepared himself for Octavia to attack, for her to mock him, point out how his failures had led to him losing Clarke but after only a self-satisfied smirk, she had sheathed her sword, promised him an army and taken off north.

She had returned with the Children of Gabriel and what she called ‘half an alliance’.

She climbs down from a tree now, her eyes darkened with war paint and a jacket that she must have taken from one of the warriors. She looks about, seeming surprised when nobody approaches her and then stalks over towards him, stopping halfway, jerking her chin and Bellamy sees Echo detouring to meet her.

  
“There’s no guards on the ground,” she reports, glancing at him before focusing her attention on Echo.

“From what I can see, no people moving about either, probably holed up in the palace.”

Echo nods, “They’re relying on the dome to keep them safe.”

And _they_ were relying on Raven to get the dome down.

Bellamy hadn’t seen her since Murphy and Miller had dragged her to the cave and he’d left her with Diyoza setting her leg.

  
“How is she?” he asks Echo who grimaces, “Angry, in pain, but says she can get the dome down.”

Xavier swaggers over, “You get the dome down, I get my people into Sanctum and we get the Primes to surrender,” he declares, “No more chipping, no more kings, queens, princes or princesses.”

Princess.

An image of Clarke dances across his mind, back in their Dropship days when her hair was clean, and her chin held high as she bossed people around.

  
“Just a reminder, Clarke Griffin, young and blonde, isn’t to be harmed in process.” Diyoza called as she straightened up, wincing and rubbing her back,

“Or Abby Griffin, in fact, maybe just aim your weapons away from anyone not actively trying to kill you.”

Xavier rolled his eyes, “Don’t kill innocents and children, thanks for that, I would _never_ have figured that one out.”

  
Bellamy runs a hand through his hair, turning on his heel towards the cave and even though the wind is damn near driving him sideways, he swears he can still hear the bickering before he even steps through the mouth.

“I’m going to stomp you like the cockroach you are!” Raven seethes as she wraps her arm across Murphy’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” he grunts as he picks her up, “Well I’m going to drop you and see if you can fly like the bird you’re not.”

“Asshole.”

“Heavy bitch.”

“I’m not…”

“Hey,” Bellamy calls, moving forward and opening his arms, “I can carry Raven.”

“We’re good,” Emori assures him, patting his shoulder with the arm not in a sling, “She needs me to help her detonate the bomb, and John’s survival instincts to get us all out alive.”

“Besides,” Murphy interjects, “you need to get Abby and Clarke back.”

“Or do us all a favour and don’t,” Raven mutters under her breath but Bellamy ignores her.

“I’ll come find you all once it’s done.”

  
They wait until nightfall, when they have the cover of darkness and Bellamy squints through the shadows as he watches three figures make their way to the clearing where the dome stood. He’s anxious for his friends, hating that they’re out in the open even though he knows that they have Diyoza with a sniper rifle ready to shoot and three warriors ready to get them out of there if somehow, they are attacked.

  
The order to ‘Get ready,’ moves down the line and Octavia eases into position beside him,

“We’ll lose the element of surprise when the bomb goes off and have to run,” she mutters,

“Head straight for the palace and try to convince them to surrender instead of fight,”

“I’ll cover you.” She adds at the end and he grits his teeth, forcing himself not to respond.

He needed her to get Clarke back.

  
Emori scrambles to her feet and hesitates as Murphy carries Raven out of there, right past Bellamy until he can deposit her safely on the ground.

And then they waited breathlessly, anticipation singing through their veins, caught on the precipice of a second that seemed to go on for hours until the fiery light exploded across their eyes, the bomb detonating as Raven had promised it would.

The sound the dome made as it went down, reminded Bellamy of droplets of water sizzling on the engine of the Rover. They watched the protection burn out moving upwards to the sky and even then, those closest still moved cautiously until they were past the towers that had barricaded them from Sanctum for so long.

Xavier raises his arm to beckon them forward and they take off at a cautious speed, watching every shadow with suspicion as they ran through the fields and jumping at every unexpected sound. They were waiting for the counterattack, for the alarms to blare or for something…

Which is why Bellamy hesitated at the steps. Panting and trying to ignore the pain in his leg as he watched the Children of Gabriel head to the guard posts.

  
“Something’s not right.” he mutters, turning to see Octavia beside him,

“It’s too quiet,” She agrees, “Even if they’re outnumbered, it makes no sense to let us get this far without putting up a fight.”

He knows that they were wearing matching expressions of concern, the two of them having fought in too many battles, skirmishes and wars to believe that it could ever be this easy.

Echo runs up beside them, almost silently, “The guard posts are empty,” she states, “There’s no-one protecting the city.”

  
Not even one lone sniper? Not even one person to raise the alarm?!

They could be walking into a trap, into a kill-box.

But Clarke was in the palace.

So, Bellamy had no choice but to climb the steps, wincing at the climb, his shoulders tense, ready for the blow that would come from above.

He hears Octavia shadowing his footsteps, warriors behind her and when he reaches the courtyard, they all fan out, towards the tavern, the houses, the school, looking for people.

Looking for signs of life.

  
“Maybe they all took shelter in the palace?” Echo suggests, her voice drenched in doubt.

“They can’t have left?” Miller suggests, having finished scoping out the tavern.

“And go where?” Octavia asks, “The Children of Gabriel have the forest, we didn’t see them take the Dropship and even if we’d missed it…” she trails off but after a moment squares her shoulders, “I told Niylah that if the ship was invaded again, to open all the cryo pods.”

“You did _what?!_ ” Echo hisses, “Are you insane?”

  
Bellamy tries to ignore the stab of disappointment in his chest, he doesn’t know why he’s still surprised by what Octavia is capable of. He tilts his head back, eyeing the palace and he swears he sees a shadow move against one of the windows.

A familiar outline that has him sprinting up the stairs, ignoring Octavia and Echo calling his name as he reaches the palace doors and forces one open.

He can hear music playing softly and chandeliers lit in the next room, and part of him is foolishly glad to have finally found signs of life.

But when he crosses the threshold, all he sees is death.

  
Bodies litter the floor where they must have fallen, dressed in finery, goblets shattered and liquid drenching their clothes and their hair. Shard of glass crunch under his boot and he studies their faces, looking for those he recognised.

Some of the people were at the table, slumped over in their seats and he sees the dog whining and pawing at Russell Lightbourne, nosing his motionless hand and barking to try and wake him up.

He loses his balance suddenly, skidding and looks down to see blood having pooled on the floor, having congealed and he follows the messy trail up to see the same guard who had taken Madi from his arms staring lifelessly at him, his throat having been slit from ear to ear.

Madi, he had to find Madi.

He moves around the bodies as quickly as he can, only looking closely at the ones who could be her.

But there were no children in the room.

The dog pads over and barks at him, whining in distress and he shrugs, “Can you…where is everybody?”

The creature looks over its shoulder, to another room where there was flickering light and whines again, a note of terror that has Bellamy nudging it aside.

Whatever else was happening, that dog was innocent.

  
He walks into a sitting room, lined with books, ornate furniture, the windows open and a fire crackling in the hearth providing the source of light. He sees a small foot dangling off the edge of the couch and rounds in quickly, gasping when he sees her.

Madi is wearing a white gown, her hair loose and brushing the floor, gold bands on her wrists and ankles. Her eyes are open and darting about, settling on him and blinking rapidly, her muscles taut and he realises that she’s been paralysed.

“It’s okay,” he assures her, slipping his arms under her knees and around her back, lifting her up and cradling her against his chest, hating how cold her skin feels against his, “We’re getting out of here.”

  
Part of him is still screaming to find Clarke and he will, but the rest of him knows that he has to get Madi out of the palace, to see her safe before he could go back.

Madi is still blinking rapidly, trying to convey a message and he bends his head,

“We’re going to find her,” he tells her, “I promise.”

He looks out the door, scanning the area and he’s halfway across the room when he hears it,

“ _Bellamy_ …”

Clarke.

He spins on his heel, causing pain to shoot through his bad leg and finally sees her.

Sitting on the throne.

  
She’s wearing the same blue dress she wore the night they chipped her, gold shoes and an ornate headpiece that he supposed must be the Lightbourne crown.

He takes a step towards her unconsciously and his foot collides with a body, causing him to recoil and Clarke laughs, her head falling forward as she gripped the arms of the throne and he notices her hands for the first time.

They’re splattered with blood.

She’s splattered with blood.

Red blood caked her fingernails, across her fingers, wrists and staining her dress.

Instinctively, he adjusts his arm so that he can cover Madi’s eyes, her eyelashes tickling his skin as she continued blinking at him.

He tries to find a path to the throne, the long dining table was covered in platters of food, otherwise he might have walked have just walked over it. As it was, he had to step over bodies until he was close enough to her.

  
“Josephine?” he asks warily, his brain frantically trying to figure out what was happening.

“I’m sorry, Bellamy,” she responded in an upbeat tone that was somehow terrifying, “Josephine can’t come out and play today.”

If Josephine wasn’t the one controlling Clarke’s body than who…?

“You’re not Clarke.” he points out, unnecessarily as she shakes her head playfully,

“Nope, guess again.” She prompts as he hears the door open behind him,

“Bellamy…” Miller cries, “We found our people and the children, they said…”

He hears his shout of horror, of disgust but he keeps his eyes on her as she pouts at him,

“Come on, Bellamy,” she groans exaggeratedly, “You’re smarter than this!”

  
He is but he doesn’t want to be, Madi is still paralysed in his arms but he can sense her terror and he knows that there could only be one reason that Madi would ever be afraid of the woman in front of him.

“Wanheda.”

He chokes on the name, barely able to get it past his lips but her cold smirk and emotionless eyes tell him that she heard.

“Sha,” she confirms, “Ai laik Wanheda. The Commander of Death…and these people,” she gestures at the sea of bodies behind him, “Tried to take what is mine.”

She raises with a grace that Clarke rarely bothered with, descending the dais and moving over to the table, gathering a plate of food and nibbling at one of the pieces,

“They failed…obviously,” she snorts,

“And…worse for them, they gave Clarke Griffin a reason to let me loose. They brought this on themselves.”

  
She gets distracted by some food that is particularly delicious because she moans and helps herself to another spoonful, allowing Bellamy the chance to figure out a path around the death and destruction.

When she realises that he’s leaving, she calls his name, confused at first and then imperiously when he doesn’t respond. Miller is only a step behind him, and they barely reach the door before the plate she throws hits the wall beside them.

He flinches but keeps going, emerging into the courtyard, descending the stairs and taking deep breaths, filling his lungs as he tries to stop the tears from falling from his eyes.

The yard is filled with people, warriors milling about, the children having been gathered into a corner and sitting down, huddled together and terrified. He sees Jackson and Abby crouched over them, checking them for injuries and he keeps walking.

He hears his name called, first by Echo, by Gaia and then by Abby as she races towards him, but he detours, striding towards the school, to the last place they had known a moment of peace, kicking the door shut behind him.

Madi is heavy in his arms and when he sags against the wall, no longer strong enough to keep standing, he positions her on his lap, tucking her head under his chin and wrapping his arms around her.

In the dark, he can’t see the tears streaming down her face, but he can feel them as they fall onto his neck.

  
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his voice cracking, “I’m so sorry, Madi.”

  
He holds her tight as they both cry, sobs wracking his body and he almost misses it when she regains the ability to move, shifting her legs, wincing and swallowing before she tilted her head up to look at him. Her eyes were so much like Clarke's, that same determination and stubbornness that she could only have learnt from her. 

  
“I am the Commander,” she croaks, her voice rough, “I am _your_ Commander, and I am ordering you to save her.”

Despite everything, he manages to smile through his tears.

“Yes, heda.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be a quick three chapter saga.   
> IDFK what happened.

The sunrises on Sanctum were so beautiful.

Bellamy should know. He’d watched them rise for ten days now.

Ten days of failure.

The light floods in from both directions, chasing the dawn away so quickly the night feels like a shadow, the chill in the air evaporating and warmth baring down on them with little warning.

His people were still trying to adjust, going to sleep with blankets and waking up sweating.

He looks over the makeshift camp now, to the dying embers of the fire that had been stoked through the night by Miller, Echo, and Diyoza.

It hadn’t taken long for some semblance of routine to settle upon their little refuge, a part of the forest where the trees were supposedly slightly less toxic than the rest.

This land had been granted to them by the Children of Gabriel, part of the half-alliance that Octavia had managed to carve out of distrust, enmity and violence. Xavier had explained that it was far enough away from Sanctum that they shouldn’t fear retaliation and far enough away from the Children of Gabriel that they would feel safe against these violent encroaches on their land.

Three enemy camps, on one small moon.

The last of the human race.

Bellamy didn’t have even the slightest ide how many Children of Gabriel there were, but there was still a few hundred Earthlings and the people of Sanctum…

Wanheda had used a ceremony to lure the people to the Palace, ordering a feast and calling for a toast to honour the Primes.

The drinks had been poisoned.

Some had died instantly; some had been paralysed and some had fallen into a coma that Abby and Jackson had spent three tireless days trying to get them out of. In the end, they’d placed them into cryo pods they’d carried from the ship until they could figure out the solution.

There hadn’t seemed any particular pattern to who had lived and who had died at first, except that Russell Lightbourne had only been paralysed and forced to watch helplessly while Wanheda murdered his people around him, taunting him and when the drug had worn off, he’d turned to his wife to find her comatose.

And there were no more nightbloods, so he couldn’t remove Simone’s chip and place it in another host, he had to either wait for her to come out of her coma or wait for nightblood to be born.

Or, as far as Bellamy could figure, another nine.

Either way, he’d walked away from Sanctum with Russell Lightbourne’s cries of agony ringing in his ears. 

Cries of agony harmonized with Wanheda’s cruel laughter.

* * *

 

Wanheda had remained in Sanctum, having watched them leave from the balcony and then followed them as far as the steps before pausing.

Bellamy had contemplated throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her out, maybe using the paralytic darts but he was afraid of angering her, of giving her reason to turn against them.

Abby had begged her to leave with them but had only received a silent, reproachful look, when she’d asked again, Wanheda had turned on her.

“Will your husband be there?” she’d snapped, “Or your lover who executed him and imprisoned your daughter?”

They had been worried about leaving her behind, worried that someone might want revenge, but she had killed their soldiers, the Children of Gabriel had looted their weapons and for all her crimes, Josephine Lightbourne’s consciousness theoretically still lived somewhere in Wanheda and it was forbidden to kill a Prime.

Besides, if looking at Clarke Griffin and seeing Josephine Lightbourne had been painful, looking at Clarke and seeing only Wanheda had been worse.

Wanheda only existed because of their cowardice and sins.  
  


* * *

 

The camp was beginning to wake up around him, Niylah emerging from her tent, tying her hair back as she went to fetch water from the stream. She glanced at him but otherwise didn’t acknowledge his existence.

Bellamy swallows back the burning sensation in his throat and pushes himself off the tree he’d been leaning against, walking away so that he wouldn’t be there in ten minutes to witness Octavia emerging from that same tent.

Their camp was a haphazard mixture of supplies taken from the Elgius ship, looted from Sanctum and gifted to them by Xavier.

Somehow, despite all this, the Commander’s tent was an ornate design with multiple layers to keep out the cold, a woven carpet on the floor and furniture inside.

There are warriors standing guard, but they don’t even react as he enters. They had tried to stop him once and Madi had warned them not to try a second time.

His eyes take a moment to adjust from the bright sunlight to the shadowed interior but when they do, he immediately looks to the centre of the space, his heart warming when he sees her there.

Madi is still asleep in the bed he’d built for her, having kicked off the covers and curled up on her side, her small feet bare and he resists the urge to tuck a blanket around her. Her chest was rising and falling with steady breaths and he can’t bring himself to wake her.

When she slept, she was just another young girl, her hair a mess, growing into her limbs and her face clear of any concerns or troubles.

When she was awake, she was Madi, Clarke Griffin’s daughter and resembled her so strongly that it broke Bellamy’s heart and physically hurt him to look at her.

He hadn’t noticed it until Clarke was no longer around to pull his focus, but so much of her had imprinted on this child, her determined stride, her straightforward stare, the downturn of her lips when things weren’t going her way.

It was so strange to see these traits, these manners unconsciously copied by Madi.

It reminded him how badly he was failing them both.

When Madi stirs awake, rolling over and blinking slowly at him, he manages to smile even as tears prick at his eyes. She frowns at him, surging forward into a sitting position and swinging her legs off the side of the bed, she leans closer and narrows her eyes,

  
“You need to sleep, Bellamy.” She declares, and he opens his mouth to lie to her, to reassure her that he was fine, but she pulls back, raising her eyebrows and daring him to contradict her.

“I’ll try.” he finds himself promising before slowly easing himself to his feet, she nods and puts her hands on her knees, glancing to the tent’s entrance before her face falls and she turns away, clearing her throat.

  
She had been waiting for Clarke, she was still trying to get used to not having her there.

And so was Bellamy. 

They were haunted by her absence.

* * *

 

Bellamy left Madi with Gaia while he made his way through the camp, searching for his people.

He makes it about ten feet before he notices Miller ambling up behind him.

Ever since they’d left Sanctum, he was rarely left alone.

Miller watched him in the morning and late at night, Murphy would sit beside him never saying much, just drinking and stargazing.

Meanwhile, Abby had outright asked if he was suicidal or contemplating self-harm and taken him on his word when he’d told her no.

Still didn’t stop people from keeping an eye on him.

Bellamy was afraid to ask why; he was afraid that they were watching him because they thought grief would make him do something stupid to himself.

But he wasn’t grieving because Clarke wasn’t gone.

She was just…well, that was why he needed to speak to Raven.

Which was easier said than done because he sees a Child of Gabriel emerging from the forest, covered head to toe in their gear and it isn’t until he pulls off the mask that he recognises him.

Bellamy isn’t sure if Xavier is the official liaison between their peoples or if he just awarded himself the title, but he wandered into their camp every few days and seemed pleasantly surprised to find them all still alive.

  
“Morning.” he calls, striding across the field towards him, “You eaten?”

“Yeah,” Bellamy lies, partly out of stubbornness and partly because he ate his meals with Abby and Madi, the three of them watching the other two ensuring they were keeping healthy.

“I was told your people were having a meeting on getting the chips out of the Primes,” he explained,

“I wanted to listen in.”

  
He was _told_?

  
“Octavia tell you?” Bellamy asked and Xavier nodded, not even reacting which had the parts of Bellamy’s brain not devoted to saving Clarke spinning to try and figure out how they were communicating.

They were limited on the number of radios they had, and if Bellamy was being watched, he figured somebody had eyes on Octavia’s movements, so they would have noticed her leaving camp for hours at a time.

  
“You could ask her yourself.” Xavier suggested, having read his mind as he led the way to the Elgius docking ship which Raven was working out of.

  
On the bridge, she was leaning over a table, chatting with Emori and holding up a device, one that looked familiar to Bellamy and his heart jumped in excitement.

  
“You rebuilt it?” he blurted out, striding forward and reaching for the contraption only for her to hold up her hands to stop him. 

“Woah, _easy_ ,” Raven demands, “I copied from the device we used to get the ALIE chips out, but I’m not sure we can use it yet.”

  
There’s noise at the door and Madi enters with Gaia and Echo, Octavia on their heels and she heads over to Xavier, Bellamy reaches out and intercepts her, grabbing her by the upper arm and she glares at him.

  
“You been talking to the Children of Gabriel?” he hisses, and she scoffs, barely able to control her contempt.

“They’ve been at war with the Primes for over two centuries, Bellamy,” she snaps, “So yeah, I figured if anyone knew about unchipping a Prime, or whatever it’s called, it’d be _them_.”

“We don’t actually,” Xavier admits, “It’s not something we ever tried, didn’t see the point because they can just make more chips and by the time they were adults, the black bloods were brainwashed past the point of saving. We figured our efforts were better directed at getting young black bloods out of Sanctum.”

“Your efforts suck.” Murphy calls from his spot on the floor and Emori murmurs his name out of sheer habit.

  
Bellamy rubs his hands over his face and looks to Madi, reminding himself that he had to relinquish leadership to her.

  
“Should we start, heda?”

She exhales, “We should wait for Abby.”

  
They hear her call to them from the hallway, arriving with a large old book in hand and exhaustion across her tight shoulders. She doesn’t sit down so much as collapse into the   
nearest chair and Bellamy moves to stand behind her.

  
“Right,” Raven clears her throat, “So, as I was saying, I managed to build the same chip removal device we used against ALIE, but until I’m able to scan one of the chips, maybe figure out the coding I wouldn’t suggest using it.”

  
It was always something.

  
First, they couldn’t save Clarke because they had to rescue their people.

Then, they couldn’t save her because they had to flee Sanctum.

Then, they couldn’t save her because they had to get away from Wanheda.

Then, they couldn’t save her because they had to build a camp first to survive.

Now, they couldn’t save her because they had the device but couldn’t be sure it worked.

  
Bellamy felt like Sisyphus rolling that rock up the hill. Every time he got close, he had to start from the beginning. He rests his hands on the back of Abby’s chair and tries to keep his breathing focused.

  
“And we also need to determine who we’re going to use it on,” Echo added, crossing her arms and swallowing nervously.  

“Clarke,” Madi answered, “ _Obviously_.”

“What I meant, Commander,” she continued, her voice placating, “Was if we were going to unchip the other Primes or leave them to live out their days?”

Madi shakes her head in clear irritation, “We can worry about that later.”

  
No, they couldn’t, they might not have the option to worry about it later.

The rock was slipping from his grasp.

Bellamy opens his mouth to point that out, but Xavier beats him to it.

  
“If we’re going to keep this alliance standing,” he begins, “I need to take a firm course of action back to Gabriel.”

“Our plan of action is to save Clarke,” Madi answers, “If he wants something more, he can come see us himself.”

Xavier smirks, “All due respect, but since arriving on this planet, your people landed your ship right in the middle of our hunting path, you had a deposed queen stalking us through the woods, trying her hardest to wipe out his people. You had a freedom fighter who only put her plan to assassinate him on pause because Russell Lightbourne reneged on his deal. And now? You have a personification of Death wandering Sanctum and a child leader with a chip in her head. Even if he wasn’t cautious about meeting new people, it’s confusing as hell to try and keep up with your people’s actions on a good day.”

Murphy snorted, “You should see us on a bad day.”

“ _Enough_ ,” Madi interjected, “So, we get a chip from Sanctum…one of the ones of the people Wanheda killed and we check it, if it has the right code then we can get Clarke back?”

  
Abby clears her throat and Bellamy wants to stop her; he wants to put his hand over her mouth before that rock went rolling down the hill again.

  
“That’s the next problem we’re going to have to face,” she comments and waits until everyone is looking at her. “On the Ark…we didn’t have lessons in psychology, beyond interrogation techniques, we floated anyone who became dangerously insane and left the rest to slowly die. I’m…trying to learn what I can now but…I still…we can’t remove the chip until we know who or what we’re getting back.”

“Clarke,” Madi repeated, “We’re removing Josephine and getting _Clarke_ back.”

  
He can hear the frustration in her voice, the way she bit on the words and when Gaia puts a hand on her shoulder, she shakes her off.  

  
Abby releases a deep, mournful sigh, “Madi…at the moment, Josephine’s consciousness isn’t dominant, and I don’t know if Wanheda is actually a personality separate from Clarke or whether my daughter’s mind has snapped.”

“So...” Octavia draws on the word, “We can’t remove the chip because we don’t know if Wanheda is just Clarke gone insane? What does it matter? Either way, yank it out and that’s one less problem and personality to worry about.”

“We need to do more research.” Abby argues, not even looking at Octavia but down at her lined hands.

“And in the meantime?” Emori asks, waving her hand in clear frustration, “We’re supposed to just have Wanheda wandering around? A woman whose go-to move is strategic mass murder?”

“Yeah,” Xavier pipes up, “No, our people are definitely going to have an issue with that.”

“And whoever’s left at Sanctum.” Murphy mutters under his breath.

  
Bellamy must be the only one with his eyes really on Madi, because he’s the only one moving towards her when her anger overcomes her.

  
“ _Enough_.” she shouts, slamming her palm down on the table.

“It’s been _ten days_ and all you are coming up with is excuses. If I was any other Commander you wouldn’t dare fail me like this, so I suggest you stop before I remember just how far I can go within the boundaries of our laws.”

  
He stopped in his tracks, no longer seeing Clarke’s daughter but the grounder leader he had known before her.

He didn’t know what to do but those who had been a part of Wonkru were shrinking in on themselves, trying to go unnoticed while Xavier studied the faces around him with concern.

  
“They’re not failing you,” he assures her, taking another step closer, “They’ll have a solution soon, in the meantime, we’re building up our home.”

“Home?” she echoed, her face incredulous, “This isn’t my _home_. Earth wasn’t my home, Shadow Valley wasn’t my home, Clarke is, Clarke has always been my home and I will fight for her like _they_ failed to.”

  
He flinches but this time he doesn’t stop her as she storms out, only able to share a helpless look with Gaia who follows her. Behind him, he hears Abby pushing herself out of the chair, moving slowly from exhaustion.  

  
“If anyone needs me,” she announces dutifully, “I’ll be in the medical bay.”

  
He can’t bare to turn around and face her.

Octavia pushes herself off from the wall, not even bothering to give a reason for leaving, Xavier mutters something like, ‘Interesting meeting’ as he goes with her.

Bellamy waits until even Murphy has picked up on his intentions, allowing Emori to pull him up and slouches out of the room, clapping him on the shoulder as he went.

Raven has turned back to him, holding the device up to the light and frowning as she studies it. Exhaling nervously, he leans back against the work bench, his hands gripping it and he turns his head to study her. She glances up at him before returning to her work,

  
“Quite the little dictator we’ve got growing there,” she comments, “Should we be asking Indra what warning signs to look out for?”

He grimaces, “She’s…she’s the commander…”

“And your sister was the queen.” Raven interjects, “Pyke and Jaha were the Chancellors…doesn’t matter what they’re called if the results are the same.”

“She’s a _kid_ ,” he argues, “A scared kid who just wants her mom back.”

“We all do,” Raven snaps, “Doesn’t give her the right to get violent.”

“Do we?” Bellamy challenges and she goes still before dropping the device on the work bench,

“The hell does that mean?” she asks, her voice deadly quiet and Bellamy braces himself before pushing forward.

“Raven…” he huffs and grips the bench a little harder, “Do we really need to run tests on another chip?”

She snorts, “Depends…”

“On?”

“On whether you want me removing something attached to Clarke’s cerebral cortex with no clue what’ll do to whatever’s left of her brain.” She shouts,

“I need to understand the goddamn code because without it, I’m just ripping out wires in a computer mainframe and hoping I don’t kill the entire machine in the process.”

  
It made sense, the way she explained it made sense to him, but that was because Bellamy had little to no understanding how any of the technology worked, so he had to be certain for Madi’s sake. 

  
“You sure that’s not just an excuse?”

“Go to hell,” Raven seethed, shoving at him with her arm, “And get the hell off my bridge.”

  
Bellamy straightened up and ran his hands through his hair in stress. He had reached the bottom of the hill and was straining his arms to pick up that rock again. 

  
“Listen…” he began, trying to reason with her, “I know you don’t like Clarke, but you used to and…”

“Don’t like Clarke?!” Raven interrupted, “Can you even hear yourself? Out of every living person left, she’s the one who’s known and loved me the longest…and don’t forget Bellamy, she was my friend back when you were still just the co-leader she could sometimes trust.”

  
Once, after exchanging blows like this, Raven would have stormed away from him but after six years together, she didn’t run anymore choosing to stay and try to talk through the problem.

She pulls herself around to face him, her eyes on the floor and a frown on her face like this was a problem she was trying to solve.

  
“I…honestly…at the moment I don’t know whether I still love her or whether I…I don’t hate her,” she adds the last part slowly, sounding the words out, “I don’t know what I feel for her but…I can’t picture a world without Clarke Griffin in it. When we were on the Ark, I couldn’t fathom the idea of coming back down to her not being there. Even now, when science and facts are telling me otherwise…I know that she’s alive because…I can’t imagine a world where she isn’t.”

“So,” she states, “This is going to take as long as it takes because I’m the first person in history to have tried to remove the Prime chips from a living person and I’m not gonna screw it up because you and her kid are impatient!”

“Now get the hell off my goddamn ship.” She finishes, and he leaves her in peace, finally feeling a semblance of hope taking root in his chest.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With regards to Raven, I wasn't sure how to portray her and Clarke's relationship as it's been for two seasons now, but a lot of people have been writing her getting a verbal bitchslap for the way she's treated Clarke. I reckon she'll process her feelings and come out the other side on her own terms.


	3. Chapter 3

  
Sanctum had been left in ruins.

The Palace stained with blood.

Their most holy place destroyed.

The faith in the Primes shaken to its core.

  
“Still though,” Murphy grunts as he settles back on the grass, “We can’t exactly go knocking on their door asking for a Prime chip to experiment on.”

  
Bellamy silently acknowledges that he has a point. He’d spent the afternoon watching Madi train, shadowing her and Gaia as they made their way about camp until he’d been pulled aside by Indra asking about a mission into Sanctum.

As it turned out, Octavia had been packing her supplies, ready to sneak into the Palace under the cover of dark and grab whichever chip she came across first.

Niylah had gone straight to Indra who hadn’t seen enough of a problem with the plan to stop Octavia outright but had wanted to check with Bellamy first.

  
“What do you even care?” Octavia had demanded when he’d told the guards not to let her out of camp,

“You left me to _die_ in the forest but suddenly an easy mission is too risky?!”

  
When he finally got Clarke back and could spare a thought for anything other than Madi’s well-being, Bellamy knew he would have to face what he had done to the woman standing before him.

The one who no longer called him Bell, not even when pressed for time, but only ever Bellamy or ‘him’.

  
“We don’t want to give them a reason to fight us,” he argued, and she lifted her eyebrows,

“A reason?” she echoed, “We gave them a _reason_ when Wanheda poisoned them at their dinner table, they haven’t attacked right now because she killed their soldiers, not because they don’t have a reason.”

“We can still try for peace.” He declares and she rolls her eyes,

“It’s not a peace offer if you destroy their world first.” She points out, but she still drops her pack on the floor and mutters something about going for a swim.

  
In the end, they send Octavia as a messenger, asking Russell to meet them by the border where the radiation shield once stood.

  
The suns are rising on the twelfth day when Russell walks down through the harvest fields where the fruits are falling off the vines. Madi had ordered Bellamy to lead the party, Gaia had volunteered, Miller and Murphy falling in and Raven tagging along because she wanted to make sure the chip wasn’t just stuffed into someone’s pocket. 

When he’s close enough, Bellamy can see silver streaks in his hair, and there are lines across his gaunt, haggard face, bags under his eyes and he moves as if he’s carrying the weight of the moon across his shoulders.

  
“We welcomed you into our home,” he announces as soon as he’s within earshot, “We shared our food, the clothes off our back and this is how you repay us?”

“We came in peace and you stole one of our people from us and threatened a child,” Gaia retorts,

“You do not get to act innocent after the blood is already on your hands.”

  
His mouth is pursed in a sulky manner, and Bellamy suspects it’s been a very long time since anyone had dared contradict his version of events.

  
“Do you have what we asked for?” he asks calmly, and Russell holds out his bare hand, squeezed into a fist, Bellamy comes forward and receives a chip dropped into his palm.

“Daniel Lee-Prime…” Russell offers by way of introduction, “I never did like that self-righteous bastard.”

  
And Bellamy has to quickly share a look with Murphy so that nobody else sees how hard he’s resisting the urge to point out irony of that statement to the Prime.

  
“Thanks,” he manages, taking a step back and turning to Raven who is holding out what Bellamy strongly suspects was the case Gaia used to keep the Flame in.

“ _Wait_ …” Russel calls quickly, leaning forward but still within the old borders, “I… _please_.”

  
Bellamy doesn’t respond quickly enough so Gaia answers,

  
“What is it?”

  
Russell runs his tongue over his teeth, clearly struggling to come up with the right words before he speaks,   
  
  
“In return for giving you this chip, I want you to take Wanheda back into the forest with you. She…it frightens the children having her here and she…she’s been desecrating our holiest relics.”

  
When nobody immediately responds to the request, Bellamy opens his mouth only to find himself speechless.

Of course, he wanted Clarke back, and in the meantime, he wanted her body safe and sound but the thought of facing down Wanheda?

  
“Yeah…” Murphy drawled, “Maybe give us a second to talk that over.”

  
They formed a huddle, closing ranks around each other and shared eye contact while they each waited for someone else to speak first.

  
Eventually Miller sighed, “I mean…to save Clarke, we’re going to need Clarke’s body and we’re already here so why not just bring her back now?”

“Because right now, she is _Wanheda_ ,” Gaia pointed out, “And as such, she is a threat to our people.”

“She’s a threat to anyone’s people,” Raven argued, “Right now, we’re just forcing a bunch of strangers to deal with her instead of us.”

“I mean…Clarke or Wanheda or whatever’s primary goal has always been keeping her people alive,” Murphy reasons,

“Bellamy and Madi are her people, so she won’t harm them.”

  
Time was, most of the people standing before him- with the exception of Gaia- had been able to call themselves Clarke’s people, safe in the knowledge that she would do her best to protect them.

  
“If you think I am letting the Commander of Death anywhere near Madi, you are insane,” Gaia hisses,

“My duty is to protect the Commander, not to throw her in the path of danger.”

Murphy snorts, “Then you probably shouldn’t have sent her to war back on Earth.”

  
Bellamy runs a hand over his face as he tries to consider their options.

His heart ached to lay eyes on Clarke again, to see her face, to make sure that she was okay, except the thought of looking at Clarke and seeing only Wanheda’s cold eyes and cruel expression felt like a stab in the gut. Bellamy believed that there was no limit to how much he loved Clarke Griffin, Wanheda was a definite test to that certainty.

  
“Wanheda won’t hurt Madi.” he tells Gaia whose answering glare is so reminiscent of Indra that he feels the older woman’s ire from miles across the forest floor.

“How can you be certain?” she demands, and in spite of everything, he manages a hint of a smile,

“Because somewhere in there is Clarke Griffin and she would never let anybody hurt her daughter.”

* * *

 

They don’t bother discussing who to send into Sanctum to lure Wanheda out.

Murphy doesn’t even make a joke about drawing straws, but he and Miller exchange a look before both of them start walking through the field, not even giving Bellamy the option of telling them to stay behind.

He has to hurry after them, putting weight on his bad leg which has him cursing them both out, which they kindly ignore but they do slow down enough for him to keep pace.

  
“So…” Miller began once they reached the steps, “Do we have a plan or are we just gonna walk right on in there and hope for the best?”

“I think you just described like ninety percent of Bellamy and Clarke’s plans.” Murphy quipped with a smirk and Bellamy tried to share in their sense of dark humour.

  
Problem was, he didn’t have an answer for them.

How was he going to convince Wanheda to leave peacefully leave Sanctum with them?

If she’d wanted to be with them, she probably would have come looking for them.

Or she could have called them on a radio, he assumed Raven was monitoring the channels or something like that.

Murphy had argued that Wanheda’s primary motivation was protecting her people, but Bellamy wasn’t sure about that anymore.

Her people had hated her for her actions, abandoned and betrayed her so many times, what if she’d reached her breaking point? What if she no longer felt the need to protect her people at the cost of her own safety and her own soul?

If duty didn’t bring her back, what else was there?

He wouldn’t use Madi as a lure, not only because it wasn’t fair on the girl to have to have to endure seeing Clarke’s body being occupied by someone or something else, but because if he was wrong and Wanheda was a danger to Clarke’s daughter, there was no way in hell he’d let her near her.

He had no idea what to do.

* * *

 

Russell had told them that Wanheda spent most of her day in the Palace, so when they reach the top of the steps, they head straight there, but they still encounter the people of Sanctum.

These people shrink away from them, conversations dying, hurrying into buildings and closing doors against them.

He remembers Delilah’s parents having welcomed them into their tavern and shared their food and clothes with them. Now…he didn’t even know if Delilah’s parents were alive.

Or if Priya had been killed by Wanheda.

He wonders if Jordan had perhaps been too afraid to ask.

  
“Warm welcome.” Miller comments, pulling on the strap of his rifle nervously,

“Are you surprised?” Murphy queried, “They blame us for what happened.”

“Considering what they did to Clarke, they should be grateful that we didn’t burn their world down.” Bellamy declares, trying to tamper the sickening feeling of guilt in his stomach with righteous anger.

  
It almost works.

He remembers that the Palace doors had once been closed and locked to prevent access from anyone who wasn’t a Prime. Now, he finds one of them ajar and placing his hand on it, he realises that it’s been broken when it yields too easily.

  
“Alright,” he says gruffly, turning to Murphy and Miller, “Wait here.”

  
The two of them share a look and step forward almost in unison before he holds up a hand,

  
“ _Whoa_ , hey…I appreciate the backup but the last thing we want is for her to feel cornered. I’ll go in…try reasoning with her and…if everything goes to hell, I’ll shout for help.”

“Ah yes, the final ten percent of Bellamy and Clarke’s plans.” Murphy intoned and he gave him a sarcastic wave,

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

* * *

 

Aside from the bodies having been removed, the Palace hadn’t been cleaned since the night of the attack. Blood had dried in large stains on the floor, food had been left to rot on the table, broken plates and glasses still splintered and crushed under his boots.

The windows in the hallway had been smashed, dust motes dancing in the light that dotted the length of the space in strange shadows, the remaining shards jagged in the fixtures.

He finds himself feeling naked without a gun, but he had left his weapon with Miller. It had barely been a conscious decision, he would never use a weapon on Clarke- even at their worst, when he’d handcuffed her, and when she’d pointed a gun at him- he wouldn’t do that.

Besides, even though it sickened him to remember, the eclipse had proven how easily he could overpower Clarke’s body if he needed to.

God, he hoped he didn’t need to.

He didn’t know the layout of the Palace, he’d figured he’d just keep walking until he found Wanheda or she came looking for him, but his ears pick up a noise which wouldn’t have been possible if his entire body wasn’t constantly on alert for Clarke Griffin.

She was singing.

A tune that still haunted his dreams.

He didn’t know the same of the song, he didn’t know the words, but he remembered the tune.

It was the same one Clarke had hummed when she’d mercy-killed Atom.

When she’d had to act because he was too much of a coward to do what needed to be done.

He follows the sound to where he finds a door slightly ajar, he clears his throat before he can bring himself to knock and the singing cuts off immediately.

There’s no response so he opens his mouth, choking on air when he realises that he was about to call for Clarke.

But he can’t bring himself to call her Wanheda.  

  
“It’s…me,” he announces awkwardly, to fill the suffocating silence, “Can I come in?”

Footsteps rapidly approach and then the door swings open, “Bellamy Blake,” she smirks,

“I was beginning to think you’d left me behind…again.”

  
Bellamy doesn’t have a response to that, for many reasons but the main one is that he’s caught sight of what she’s wearing and…well…

That definitely came from Josephine’s wardrobe and he’s not entirely certain it was something that was supposed to be worn during the day.

There seemed to be a lot of lace and not much…coverage.

She chuckles when his neck goes tense and he deliberately maintains contact with her eyes alone.

  
“Do you like it?” she teases, waving a hand up and down her body, “It itches and annoys me, but I got paint and turpentine on everything else Josephine owns, so…this is all that’s left.”

  
She turns on her heel and he follows, trying not to notice how Josephine’s clothes really weren’t built for Clarke’s figure. The way that clung to her and rode up suggested the last body Josephine inhabited must have been less…

Never mind.

He’s already going to Hell, no need to earn himself a standing ovation before he’s even through the gates.

  
Wanheda strides to the middle of the room, gesturing about, “I’ve been touching up Josephine’s paintings,” she begins, “What do you think?”

  
He glances around, glad to have something to look at and focus on that’s not the body of his best friend and his eyes widen when he sees the canvases.

From what he can tell, Josephine had painted flowers in shades of purple and landscapes at sunrise, and a massive self-portrait of herself smiling.

Wanheda had touched these up by cutting the canvases with the flowers, filling the landscapes with dead bodies and altered Josephine’s portrait so that she was weeping black blood down her burnt and scarred face.

It was _grotesque_.

But what he saw when he averted his gaze was worse.

The skulls.

_Human_ skulls.

Wanheda picked up the one closest to her, holding it up to her face and smiling,

  
“After I destroyed every last inch of their lab, I decided to play with their holy relics,” she explained, dropping it carelessly back down on the bench,

“I think I’ll decorate them in bright primary colours, maybe I’ll even make one for you?”

  
She smiles teasingly and he tries to swallow as his mouth goes dry.

  
“I…we made a deal with Russell Lightbourne,” he croaks, “We need you to come back with us.”

  
She pouts, turning away to pick up the paint brush, tossing it between her hands before settling on her left and leaning towards the canvas,

  
“Why?”

He scratches the back of his neck, “We’re…trying to find a way to bring Clarke back.”

“Obviously,” she smirks, “But why now?”

  
Because they were here anyway.

Because nobody quite knew what to do with her, but it wasn’t fair to keep making her Sanctum’s problem.

Because when they finally figured out how to get Clarke back, he didn’t want to waste a single second.

He figured the truth wouldn’t help him in this case.  

  
“I know you don’t have a reason to come back…” he admits, shifting towards her, sliding his hands into his pockets, “but…please?”

  
Slowly, she puts the paintbrush down and pivots to face him, a small frown between her eyebrows,

  
“Bellamy,” she sighs, shaking her head with a smile, “Aren’t _you_ a reason for me to come back?”

  
He froze as his face flushed and he tried to remember how words worked.

_Was_ he a reason for her to come back?

He never had been for Clarke, so why would he be for Wanheda?!

Not that it mattered anyway, that was Clarke’s body she was walking around in.

  
“Clarke and I…” he stammered, “We aren’t like that.”

  
She laughs, closing the distance between them to lay a hand over his heart and it feels like fire burning into his chest,   
  
  
“Only because the timing was never right to talk about it, but trust me, she adores you.”

“It’s quite annoying actually,” she muses, stepping back, “Between her love for you and Madi, she wouldn’t dare let me burn the world down.”

  
Her love for him and Madi.

Right, he was Clarke’s family, he was important to her as a friend.

It figured the Commander of Death wouldn’t know the difference between platonic love and romantic love.

  
He kills the hope he’d been feeling bloom in his chest, “So,” he prompts, “Are you coming?”

Wanheda gives him a wry smile before running her eyes down her body,

  
“I should probably change first.”

* * *

 

She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said that she’d got paint and turpentine on Josephine’s clothes, they were all liberally doused with the stuff, to the point that going within three feet of the sodden pile made his eyes water.

They couldn’t figure out what Josephine had done with the clothes Clarke had arrived in and nothing in Simone Lightbourne’s closet would come close to fitting her.

Bellamy was at the point of trying to find a sewing kit so he could quickly piece together an outfit for her when he had the idea to see if there were any guard uniforms about.

He found a male tunic and female pants that would fit Clarke’s body and a pair of boots that were a size to big, so he stuffed them with a shirt torn in two.

Either because they were worried about him, or because Murphy had got bored, Bellamy finds his two friends in the dining hall, Miller trying to fend off Murphy who was trying to force feed him something that wasn’t supposed to be that shade of grey.

It took them a second to notice their appearance and when they did, Miller was distracted to the point where he skidded, and Murphy had to catch him.

  
“Good to know that if things had gone south for Bellamy, you two were keeping watch,” Wanheda snapped sarcastically, “Where’s Octavia? At least she has the burden of familial blood forcing her to keep you alive.”

He doesn’t really have a response to that, so he jerks his head, “Come on, our people are waiting just over the border.”

“Your people.” Wanheda whispers and his blood runs cold.   
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW- Somewhat graphic depiction of violence for one sentence which will be marked with TWTWTW if you wish to skip.

  
Bellamy tries not to take it personally when they reach their border where their friends are waiting for them and sees the clear surprise on their faces.

If he’d been the one waiting, he wouldn’t have been sure he could bring Wanheda back either.

Russell Lightbourne releases a clear sigh of relief and she turns on him, her smile cruel and her eyes taunting,   
  
  
“Bye daddy,” she teases, waggling her fingers,  

“May we meet again.”

  
At some point, he must have found out what those words meant to Skai-kru because the blood drains from his face.

Raven had been propping herself against a tree, but she makes her way over now, moving in a semi-circle so that she keeps her distance from Wanheda, and Russell shifts to face her,

  
“You don’t deserve anything from us,” she tells him, the barest strain of empathy in her tones, “But if I can figure out a way, I’ll get your daughter in the chip back to you in one piece.”

  
Wanheda leans in close to him, putting a hand on his arm to steady herself, her breath hot in his ear.  

  
“Hopefully without harming my body.”

  
He shoots her a glance as Russell thanks Raven and Murphy snorts,   
  
  
“Right, we’ve been the good guys long enough, let’s go.”

  
Miller rolls his eyes, but Bellamy can feel the itch to be away from Sanctum in his legs,

  
“He’s right, let’s move out.”

  
Just before they reach the tree line, he looks over his shoulder, to take in the city one final time.   

Russell is still standing there, his shoulders slumped, his arms at his sides, watching them leave.

He looked lonely.

He looked lost.

* * *

 

Wanheda had a particular stride, she moved quickly and purposefully to get to her destination without allowing for distractions or detours.

She was managing to keep pace with Gaia who had pulled out front, clearly eager to get back to camp, and Bellamy nearly lost sight of them as he brought up the rear with Raven.

  
“Are you okay?” she asked under her breath as he struggled to keep an eye on her blonde hair through the trees.

  
Was he okay?

He hadn’t been okay since…

He hadn’t been happy, those six years on the ark, but he’d more or less been okay.

Everything since then had been brief glimpses of hope followed by despair.

  
“I will be when this is over,” he decides, “When we get Clarke back.”

  
When not if, because he refused to accept a future without Clarke, a future where he just gave up and stopped fighting for her. Now that he knew she was alive; he couldn’t give up.

He’d spent too many years already living without her, he wouldn’t do that again.

He wouldn’t survive it this time around.

He spies a flash of blonde and sees Wanheda coming back, searching for him with a frown on her face. She notes him walking beside Raven and falls back, between the two of them so that Raven has to shift to give them space.

Bellamy and Clarke had always walked in sync, despite the differences in their height, even in the early days, they’d easily fallen in step and he’d covered her, protected her.

Wanheda keeps outpacing him before consciously reminding herself to slow down and he can see that it’s irritating her.

  
“You know, you can go on ahead,” he snaps, after his slow ascent up a slope has her huffing impatiently,

“Nothing’s stopping you.”

She clenches her hands into fists and glares, “You’re injured, idiot,” she retorts,

“And vulnerable…anything happens to you, what do you think Clarke would do to me?”

  
He doesn’t know how to respond to that, because like everyone else he doesn’t have the first clue whether Clarke and Wanheda are two different mental entities or whether Clarke is having- as Murphy dubbed it when he thought Bellamy was out of earshot- ‘a long overdue psychotic break’

  
“I don’t even know,” he answers honestly, “Talk me through it.”

  
She purses her lips, looks around as if searching for an excuse before shifting closer to him,

  
“At first, the neural mesh from ALIE enabled Clarke to survive the mindwipe, with Josephine forced to invade her space,” she begins, her voice low and he ducks his head so he can hear her.

“But Clarke figured out how to retaliate pretty quickly, she got into Josephine’s mind chip, worked out how to summon memories and when she realised what needed to be done, she pulled me out of her subconscious to do it.”

She pauses then, to glare at him as he navigates his way downhill, gripping a tree so he doesn’t lose his footing. “Russell Lightbourne could probably explain it better, but after Josephine surrendered, I saw an open door and walked through it, finding myself in this world.”

  
Russell Lightbourne probably could explain it better, however Bellamy suspected he wasn’t about to go out of his way to provide them with help or advice. Still, what Wanheda had given him was enough.

If Wanheda called herself part of Clarke’s subconscious, if she thought they were two separate beings, surely that meant that she could be sent back down, and Clarke pulled up?

He’d run this theory by Raven and Abby later, see what the more scientifically inclined minds said.

They’re over halfway back to camp when he notices that he’s not the only one struggling, Raven’s face is pinched and she’s moving her leg a little more forcefully, as if trying to will it not to hurt.

Bellamy assumes that it’s not working.

Wanheda doesn’t help as they drop their packs to the ground, stretching out their arms and grabbing their supplies. Bellamy drinks deep from his water bottle before handing it off to Raven, he claps her shoulder gently as he moves past, watching as she leans against a tree and glares at them.

Gaia makes her way towards him, turning her back on her,

  
“I should go on ahead,” she states, “I don’t need to rest.”

He shakes his head, “It’s not safe, even if we’re at peace we still don’t know enough about this planet to go off alone, if you get lost or walk down the wrong path…”

  
Gaia really was a champion of the disapproving glare, even Indra couldn’t manage one with that blistering level of heat,   
  
  
“I was born _Trikru_ , this might not be Earth but I’m not going to die from walking through a forest.”

“Besides,” she adds, “I want time to warn Madi about…it isn’t fair to surprise her with this.”

  
_Madi_.

Bellamy had forgotten about her.

She’d know within seconds of seeing her that Clarke wasn’t back, and he had no idea how she’d react.

They couldn’t exactly sneak Wanheda into camp, even if he did convince her to wait until nightfall, someone would notice her distinct blonde hair or hear her voice and word would get back to the commander.

He should be the one to tell her that they were bringing back Wanheda.

But he couldn’t be in two places at once and he already knew she wouldn’t react well to him leaving her.

Ever since the day he’d met Madi, all he’d done was fail her.

And now he had to do it again.

Gaia cared for Madi, he knew that, but she looked at her and saw the Commander, chosen by the Flame to lead her people. In times like this, Madi needed someone who looked at her as a child, who wanted to protect her because they loved her, not because she carried valuable technology in her head.

Gaia wouldn’t shield Madi from the truth, she wouldn’t try to lessen the blow, she’d tell her what she had to know and whatever emotional fallout she suffered would be meditated on later.

But Bellamy couldn’t leave Wanheda with his friends, even on their best days they had been awful to Clarke, verging on cruel because it was easier for them to hate her than it was to reflect on all the ways they’d failed her. Clarke had taken their abuse because she believed that she deserved it.

Wanheda knew exactly what she deserved and if any of his people suggested otherwise, he suspected that she’d fight back.

And as cathartic as that would be for her, he couldn’t be taking care of her and consoling his friends through emotional crises simultaneously.

Gaia didn’t need his permission, or his approval but he sends her off with an instruction to be careful.

When they’d first landed on Earth, Clarke hadn’t been in peak physical condition, the downside to having been kept in solitary confinement for a year, the most exercise she’d got had been pacing her cell. Adrenaline had helped, but she’d struggled with long distance treks and been desperate to hide it, eager to pretend that she was fine, that she wasn’t breathless or nursing a stitch. After a while, she’d built up her stamina, but Bellamy had still found himself drawn to her whenever they’d stopped for breaks.

He wonders if that’s why Wanheda waits for him to join her by the tree.

  
“Thirsty?” he asks, having taken his water back from Raven which she eyes disdainfully,

“I’m a subconscious projection of the darkest parts of Clarke’s brain,” she argues, “I don’t feel…anything physical, like ALIE but actually effective in my plans.”

  
His stomach drops as he remembers how many of their people had escaped Polis after ALIE just to collapse in the woods, dehydrated, starving or injured.

  
“ _Drink_.” he orders, pushing the bottle to her chest and she surrenders with a smirk, pausing only to wipe the lid with her sleeve, “Yes, sir.”

“When was the last time you ate?” he demands, ignoring her teasing and she seems to prolong the drink she’s taking from the bottle just to taunt him, to allow the panic to take root in his chest.

“Last night,” she finally answers, gasping a little after swallowing, “I don’t feel the need to eat but I like the taste of food.”

  
Bellamy exhales through his nose, letting his relief wash over him before he looks over his shoulder, shouting to Miller to check if he and Jackson were good to go.

The sooner they got back to camp, the sooner he could get Clarke back.  

* * *

 

It’s late afternoon before they finally reach the outskirts of their camp and Bellamy scans the faces of those milling about, noting that none of them seem particularly friendly.

And one is Octavia.

Her hand is resting on her sword, tugging at a loose bit of leather that she could easily fix herself and he wonders if she’s waiting for him to volunteer or if she just likes having something to fiddle with.

  
“Gaia made the announcement in the middle of a meeting,” she offers by way of greeting,

“It went about as well as you think.”

  
Bellamy winces and finds himself automatically shifting to cover Clarke’s body, as if to shield her, as if anybody would dare attack her in the middle of their camp.

As if Wanheda couldn’t protect herself.

Octavia looks over his shoulder, making eye contact with Wanheda and the two women regard each other curiously, both unsure of their reactions and reception to one another.

Bellamy reckons it won’t be any easier for anyone else in the camp either.

  
“Come on,” he beckons to Wanheda, touching her arm briefly to grab her attention and leading him towards his tent.

  
About an hour back, he’d had a minor crisis when he’d remembered that they hadn’t set up a tent or room in the Elgius ship for Clarke, because he hadn’t been in charge of organising the camp and in her absence, nobody else had considered her. He’d quickly come to the decision to share his tent, not only because he wanted to keep an eye on her, but because he figured she wouldn’t be comfortable with anyone else.

She might not be entirely comfortable with him, but the only other potential option was Abby and he wasn’t about to risk one of the few doctors they had.

Besides, she might say no, and he didn’t want to risk any part of Clarke being rejected by her mother.

Much like his emotional state and his life in general, his tent is a mess. What few clothes he had were strewn about and his sleeping area, which was a sleeping bag and mattress carried out of the Elgius ship had been kicked into the corner when he’d been looking for his boots.

At least Bellamy had enough clout amongst their people that he was able to get a tent big enough for two people.

Although, after doing some rough calculations, he reckoned they could maybe fit one and a half.

  
“I’ll uh…” he stammered, scratching the back of his neck, “I’ll see if I can find you some supplies.”

  
Wanheda falls back onto his mattress, propping herself up on her hands and crossing her legs,

  
“Not even going to offer to share?” she teased, “Clarke would be offended.”

  
Bellamy gives her an unimpressed look and doesn’t bother to point out the obvious. He and Clarke had never shared a bed, hell, the closest they’d come had been having their sleeping bags within reach of one another when they’d been travelling and even then, they’d been on different watches, so they hadn’t even slept at the same time.

He has a brief flash of fantasy where he woke up with Clarke in his arms and scrubs it from his mind as he goes in search of something resembling bedding.

Jordan ends up being the one to provide him with a blanket, one that had come from the Children of Gabriel and was less a gift than them being unwilling to mend it any further, it was more patches and stitching than blanket at this point, but he figures he can find some old scraps and make it work.

He doesn’t know how long he’s gone, but when it gets back to the tent, it’s empty.

He doesn’t even know why he’s surprised.

He drops everything onto the blanket and storms out to find the suns are beginning to set, casting golden light everywhere and he scans the people around him, unable to see her anywhere.

Where would Wanheda go?

Their weapons were under lock and keypad, the Elgius ship couldn’t drop any bombs, the people carrying anything dangerous wouldn’t give them up without a fight…

  
“ _Bellamy!_ ”

  
He hears his name called and pivots, pulling on his bad leg and the pain is enough to make his world flash white for a second, he stumbles slightly and Echo jogs towards him gripping his arms to steady him,

  
“I heard you were back and…”

“I’ve lost her,” he interrupts, “I went to find her some blankets and now she’s gone, and I don’t know where…”

Echo pauses, “Wanheda?” she asks, her head swivelling as she searches their immediate area,

“I have to find her,” he cries, pushing away and wincing at the stinging in his leg but he puts weight on it anyway, limping towards Indra’s tent, ready to beg her for help putting together a search party when Echo calls his name again, catching up to him and pointing north.

  
Madi is storming across camp, her face thunderous but her step determined, her right arm stretched behind her as she dragged Clarke’s body by her wrist.

People scattered out of the way and Bellamy only just managed to fall in as they reached the ramp of the Elgius ship, Wanheda throwing him an amused smirk over her shoulder as she was led right to the bridge.

  
“Get me Raven!” Madi shouts, as the doors slide closed, “ _Now!_ ”

  
Bellamy assumes someone else can carry out that order, he eases forwards and the second Madi releases her wrist, he takes Wanheda’s shoulders and manoeuvres them both out of the way. He mustn’t be subtle because Madi’s confusion is clear on her face, but he doesn’t have time to speak before Raven appears on the threshold.

Her eyes dart to Wanheda immediately, searching her face as if looking for signs of Clarke. Bellamy had done the same when Josephine was the one inhabiting this body.

It wasn’t any less painful to see Wanheda in her place.

  
“She’s here,” Madi declares, waving a hand without turning her head in their direction, “We can begin.”

He senses her tense beside him, “Begin?” she echoes to him in undertones, “Not to be demanding but please tell me you have a _plan_.”

Bellamy swallows, “Madi, we can’t just barge in, we have to go slowly.”

  
Their people are starting to file into the room, Octavia striding in, taking in the situation and leaning against the very centre of the console and Bellamy knows that he couldn’t ask more of her in that moment, not after everything but it still hurt to not have her on his side.

In fact, everybody seemed to be keeping their distance, either standing behind the commander or on the far side of the room, Xavier didn’t even go that far, choosing instead to lean against the door, the sensors keeping it open for him.

The tension in the room, the eyes that were flickering between Wanheda and Madi, the fact that nobody seemed even cautiously optimistic had Bellamy shifting further, trying to block her with his body and he feels her warm breath on the back of his neck as she huffs in annoyance.

Abby is almost frogmarched into the room between two warriors and she can’t even bring herself to look at her daughter’s body, keeping her eyes on the floor as she sinks into a chair that Jackson pulls out for her.

She’s barely touched the seat before Madi rounds on Raven who is at her workbench,

  
“Okay, we have the chip, we have Clarke’s body, hurry up and run the tests so we can take Josephine out.”

  
Raven’s shoulders drop and she throws a helpless look to Bellamy who eases forward, holding his hands up complacently,   
  
  
“Madi, we’ve been over this,” he reminds her, “Raven wants to make sure the procedure is safe first and we have to make sure that we know who we’re getting back…”

  
Madi shoves past him, and if it hadn’t been for his bad leg, he would have been more worried about hurting her than the other way around. She stops just short of Wanheda,

  
“Is Josephine still in there?” she demands and Wanheda smirks as her eyes flash.

“She’s in her own mindspace but yes…she’s in here.”

  
That revelation manages to lighten the load on Bellamy’s shoulders and sink like a stone in his stomach.

If Josephine was alive, this meant that they had something to bargain with and they could return her to her father or kill her once and for all.

But the selfish part of him had hoped that Clarke had found a way to kill her, so that the impossible choice had already been made for them.

Madi’s lips thin as she tries to control her anger, but there are red splotches on her cheeks,

  
“Fine, Raven, what do we need to do?”

  
Raven launches into some technical spiel, backed up by Emori who would interject with some easier to understand explanations whenever she saw just how lost the rest of them were. When Raven seemed to be slowing down, Jackson took over to talk about Clarke’s brain and his theories on…

Bellamy didn’t have a single clue.

If they needed him to work up a battle plan or hell, even draw up a map for their camp he could probably call up ancient civilisations that had been in somewhat similar terrain and figure out what could work but right now?

He had no idea.

In these instances, he would glance at Clarke to see her nodding along, understanding everything that Jackson was saying and then she’d either explain it to him later if he needed to know or just let it go if he didn’t.

Instead, he wasn’t even standing beside Clarke’s body but in front of it, not even able to explain why or unwilling to face the fact that in this room full of people that he would have once trusted with his life, he no longer trusted them with Clarke’s.

Her hands brush his sides, just above his hips and despite the layers of clothes his skin tingles at the contact, which is probably why he allows himself to be drawn backwards to his original position and because he assumes that he’s protecting her, he doesn’t immediately react when she appears in front of him.

  
“There’s another problem,” she interrupts, cutting Jackson off mid-sentence, “Sorry.”

  
Abby is twisting her hips in her chair to look out the window, visibly flinching at the sound of Clarke’s voice.

  
“What’s the problem?” Miller asks because nobody else can bring themselves to.

“Well,” Wanheda drawls, “When Clarke was reshuffling the mindspaces, she didn’t consider that Josephine would need to survive or really prioritized her well-being because Josephine Lightbourne is a sociopathic bitch.”

  
Although most of them had met Josephine and agreed with that sentiment, it was still strange to hear Clarke’s voice speaking those words.

  
“So, what happened to Josephine?” Xavier queries, swaggering into the room, his forearm resting on his holster.

***TWTWTW***  
  
Wanheda clicks her tongue, fighting the satisfaction on her face, “After an intense tour of Clarke Griffin’s greatest hits, she stuck her in her memories of Praimfaya. Specifically,” she adds, pre-empting the next question from Xavier, “Josephine Lightbourne is lying on the floor of Becca’s lab, suffering third-degree radiation burns, in excruciating pain and wondering how much of her own blood she’ll eventually have to lick off the floor so as to not die of thirst.”  
  
***TWTWTW***

Abby slapped a hand over her mouth as she gagged, Jackson moving to her side only for her to wave him back as she began taking deep breaths. Bellamy swallowed back the bile in his throat, blinked back the tears in his eyes and forced down the tumult of emotions coursing through him.

He’d left her behind to die.

And she nearly had.

But this wasn’t about him, not right now.

He focused on Madi, scanning her with his eyes, searching desperately for any signs of distress.

All he got was a slight furrow between her brows.

  
“Gross.” she stretched out the word, her voice rising in the fascinated tone of children when faced with something foul. Octavia had the same reaction when he was sick or injured.

  
Clarke must have given her a sanitized version of this story at some point.

  
“How…” Xavier pauses as he composes himself, “How long has she been in there?”

Wanheda shrugs, “Since I took over Clarke’s body.”

“So,” Raven stalls as she does the calculations in her head, “Eleven days of hell?”

“Closer to twelve,” Wanheda corrects, “I was in control for most of the night before the feast day.”

Raven presses her palm to her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut, “Welp, I told Russell I’d try and get Josephine back to him alive, I never promised to get her back sane.”

Jackson clears his throat, “Uh…Cl…um…Wanheda?”

  
He gives a little wave and she blinks in clear surprise at having actually been addressed by someone, she gives a nod and he proceeds.

  
“Do you have any idea how to get Josephine back in control of yo-Cl- the body?”

  
Wanheda leans back, her stance becoming cold and closed off, she’s not crossing her arms yet but they’re being held stiffly at her sides,   
  
  
“I could figure it out, _if_ I wanted.”

Jackson shifted a little, clearly uncomfortable and he threw an apologetic glance at Abby, “See the thing is, we’re the first people removing a chip from a living person and we figured we’d just…”

“Do what the Primes did in reverse?” Wanheda surmised, “To prevent any brain damage?”

  
Jackson nodded, still glancing to Abby every few seconds, waiting for support that she wasn’t able to give at that moment.

  
“Give me some time,” she requested, “We’ll need to be asleep and it won’t be easy, but we’ll get it done.”

  
_We_.

She meant her and Clarke.

Bellamy looks to Raven so fast that he actually cricks his neck, and she gives a miniscule nod to show that she picked up on it too. He’s not sure about Abby, she doesn’t appear to have heard anything they’d discussed after Josephine’s current whereabouts, but someone would tell her later.

For now, they had nothing left to discuss about the three people in Clarke’s body and Madi’s impatience to leave was clear in the way she was clenching her jaw and nearly tapping her foot.

  
“Anything else?” Gaia prompts and when nobody speaks up, Madi ends the meeting and storms out, not even looking back once. Everyone follows so quickly that it reminds Bellamy of a mother with her children and soon it’s just him, Miller and Octavia standing with Wanheda. 

“Geeze,” Wanheda mutters, watching her leave, “And I thought Raven hated me.”

Bellamy sighs, touching her forearm as he passed her, “Come on we should…”

  
Bellamy always carried a knife on him, tucked into his sleeve, it had been a gift from Lincoln, and he kept it more for sentimental value, it had a hand-carved handle and a small blade he mostly used for cutting thread or his food into bite sized pieces. It only became a weapon in dire circumstances.

Such as when Wanheda had lifted it off him without him realising and now had it pressed to his throat.

She was fast, but Octavia was only a second behind her, a real dagger pressed to the back of Clarke’s neck.

  
“Drop it,” she orders, her voice dark and drenched in blood, “ _Now_.”

Wanheda smiles as she holds the knife up, allowing Miller to take it from her, “See,” she says, maintaining eye contact with Bellamy, “if you’d been in danger, she would have been at your side in an instant.”

  
Octavia doesn’t handle the knowledge that she’d been tested well, giving a sweeping kick of her leg that knocks Clarke’s feet off the floor and Bellamy catches Wanheda before she hits the deck, losing his own footing and straining his bad leg as the two of them topple together.

He doesn’t even have time to shout at his sister before she’s out the door and he settles for cursing as he and Wanheda struggle to get back up, bumping and knocking against each other as Miller stands back and lets the chaos unfold.

  
“I’m gonna go deal with that.” He announces, leaving the two of them alone.

Wanheda runs a hand through Clarke’s hair, “I was right,” she declares, “And I bet you feel happy knowing Octavia still loves you.”

  
Yes, but Bellamy would have preferred finding out because his sister told him, not because she’d reacted to an attempt on his life.

  
“Come on,” he sighs, “Let’s go…rest.”

* * *

 

After only a few hours stuck in his tent, Bellamy was ready to scream.

Having spent most of his life in a tiny, cold room meant for two people and housing three, he would have thought that he’d be used to cramped spaces.

He’d never realised just how much time he spent outside until he couldn’t go outside.

Or he could, but it wasn’t fair to Wanheda.

They’d tried just sitting quietly by a campfire for a few hours but the stares and the silent recriminations had been getting under her skin, until Murphy had made a comment as he walked passed and she’d snapped, calling him a traitorous cockroach amongst other things, pulling up every single crime he’d committed against his own people and humanity in general before Bellamy could pull her away.

He’d barely checked to make sure that one of his people was on hand to comfort Murphy before he’d bundled Wanheda into his tent.

And there they’d settled in to wait.

It wasn’t easy, there wasn’t anything to do, Bellamy didn’t have any of Clarke’s possessions and even if he did, he’s not sure how he felt about someone who wasn’t Clarke rifling through them, he’d offered Wanheda one of his books to read, but she’d only pushed it away, muttering something about Josephine’s library.

They’d settle for lying on their respective beds, staring up at the tent in silence so tense that he’d need Octavia’s sword to cut it.

Worse, he can feel anticipation and Wanheda’s expectation crawling across his shoulders, the beginnings of pain trickling down the muscles of his back.

Ironically, he’s waiting so intently for the moment to break that he doesn’t actually hear what she says to him,

  
“Sorry?”

  
He lifts his head and sees her rolling onto her side to face him,  

  
“Nobody ever _thanked_ me!” she burst out, shoving a fist under her pillow to prop it up further,

“Russell Lightbourne wouldn’t have stopped with me, he would have chipped Madi and if he’d found out that I was a synthetic nightblood, he would have turned all your people into hosts’ and nobody even thanked me for stopping him.”

  
Bellamy grunted and shifted on his bed, lacing his hands together on this stomach,

  
“You said it again,” he mutters, so low that she can barely hear.

“What?!”

“You keep saying _‘your’_ people,” he pointed out, “They’re your people too.”

She snorts, “They’re only my people when they’re injured or need saving,”

“The rest of the time they treat me like a freikdrein, hell Bellamy, they can’t even bring themselves to be decent to Clarke.”

  
He resists the urge to lose his temper, if both of them lost their heads in this confined space it’d get ugly.   
  
  
“Our people care about Clarke,” he counters, thinking of Madi and Abby, “And she cares about them.”

“Then why isn’t she here?”

  
That question has him pulling himself up slowly as his brain fires up and processes those words.

  
“What do you mean?”

  
She huffs, always impatient with him and pushes herself up to mirror his position,

  
“I’m a subconscious projection of Clarke,” she reminds him, “I’m bound by the limits and commands of her mind. If I’m walking around in her body, without a single interruption, that means there’s nothing to have stopped her coming back days ago. Unless, she doesn’t want to come back.”

  
Doesn’t _want_ to come back?

He reacts cautiously, allowing Wanheda to see and predict his next movement so that she doesn’t panic, and it’s only when he’s placing his hands on her cheeks, cupping her face and tilting it upwards that she flinches, her eyelids fluttering,

  
“Can Clarke hear me in there?”

Her eyes dart around, “I don’t know,” she admits, “She should have access to my memories.”

“Okay.”

  
He breathes in and out, trying to think of what he could possibly say.

He decides to speak from the heart.

  
“Listen Princess,” he begins, “I know our people have let you down and failed you, I have too and I’m sorry, I’m sorry for every time I wasn’t there for you, for every time I betrayed you and for every time I hurt you. If I could erase all of those mistakes I would, but I can’t, and I can only promise to try and do better going forward. Just like Monty asked us too. But Clarke, I can’t do that if you’re not here, and I need you here, Madi needs you here, you might think that we can do this without you, but we don’t want to,” He pauses to wet his lips, “ _I_ don’t want to, so I need you to come back, please.”

Wanheda blinks slowly, “I’ll try and get the message to her.” She promises and he barely even thinks before leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead in gratitude,

“Thank-you…for everything.”

  
She nods and when he releases her, she lies down curling in a protective position and closing her eyes.

He goes back to bed and turns off the lamp, casting them into the semi-darkness of the first moon.

  
“Aren’t I better than Josephine or nothing at all?” she asks, across the space and he feels a stab of pity for her.

“Yeah,” he answers, “But nothing beats the hope of getting Clarke back.”

* * *

 

They’d been at the campsite for six days before they realised that there was some sort of marsupial resembling creature local to the area that liked to greet the second sunrise with a guttural growl that sounded a lot like an engine failure.

Try as they might, they hadn’t managed to find it or kill it yet.

In their tent, she wakes up with a shrieked curse, kicking off the blankets and staring around in confusion,

  
“Um…Where in the holy hell am I?!”

  
Bellamy had been awake since dawn and even though he’d predicted this scenario, he still hadn’t known how he’d react.

  
“Hello Josephine.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!!!

“I want to go home!”  
  


Bellamy pressed his fist against his forehead hoping to will his headache away.

  
It didn’t work.

  
“We’ve been over this,” he growls, not bothering to open his eyes.

  
“Once the mind drive is out, we’ll return it…you to your father.”

  
“I want to go home in _this_ body,” Josephine clarifies, gesturing to Clarke’s shoulders, “I like this body.”

  
“Yeah, well so does Clarke,” he points out, “And it’s hers so she gets it back.”  
  


“Oh puh-lease,” she cries, “She doesn’t even appreciate all this. Seriously, did you not have razors on Earth, because it was _ridiculous_ down there. Also, she has more tan lines than she does actual tan. How does that even happen?”

  
He missed Wanheda.

  
It had only been two hours’, but Bellamy missed Wanheda.

  
Yes, the manifestation of Clarke’s darkness had been a potential threat to all living creatures on this moon but at least she hadn’t felt the need to objectify Clarke’s body in a high pitched breathy tone.

  
The very moment he’d realised that Josephine was awake and in control, he’d dragged Clarke’s body kicking and scratching to the Elgius ship, where she’d screeched Clarke’s head off so loudly that he hadn’t needed to call for Raven or Abby to start prepping.  

  
In the meantime, Octavia and Diyoza had cleared the canteen and stuck him in there to watch Josephine.

  
After about three minutes, the two women had decided to guard the door, less because they were afraid of attack- the Sanctum soldiers weren’t making it that far through the forest and the Children of Gabriel were their allies- and more because Josephine was really, _really_ annoying.

  
There was no-one else willing to put up with her, so Bellamy- out of devotion to Clarke- was the one who had to suffer.

  
Watching as she paced the length of the room in Clarke’s body, swaying her hips with deliberate exaggeration, pouting at him and fiddling with her hair.

  
It made him physically sick that she was trying to use Clarke’s body against him.

  
Clarke was so much more than her hair, her eyes and her smile.

  
Josephine couldn’t even do that right.

  
“I mean, it’s not like you’re even doing her this massive favour!” she ranted, her arms spread out,

  
“I’ve seen her memories, hell, I lived them, and that girl hasn’t had fun since…well, you and Space-kru came back to Earth.”

  
She hadn’t known real peace since the valley.

  
Bellamy has to turn his head away, swallowing back his automatic denial as Josephine’s truths hit too close to home.

  
Part of him had wondered whether Clarke regretted their return, if she regretted that they hadn’t killed Eligus-kru when they had the chance.

  
Part of him, the shameful, anxious parts that kept him awake at night, wondered if Clarke ever tallied up the pros and cons of having saved his life and came up short.  
  
He reckoned that he knew the answer.

Josephine is still talking at him, he tries to tune her out, not easily because he used to be able to pick up Clarke’s voice in a crowded room but eventually, by focusing on a spot of dried blood on the canteen floor he can fill his head with white noise.

It’s why he doesn’t respond until Diyoza knocks on the table to get his attention causing him to jump and she holds her hands up,   
  
  
“Didn’t mean to startle you, but someone wants a word.”

  
His eyes go to Josephine but she’s fiddling with her hair, focused on deliberately ignoring someone so he follows the direction of her turned back to see Echo standing in the corridor.

He stands up before remembering that he was supposed to be watching Josephine.

If she escaped and made it back to Sanctum…

  
“Go,” Diyoza urges, “We’ll watch her.”

  
He glances at Octavia who gives a slight nod before exhaling and moving out to the corridor.

* * *

When he reaches her side, Echo takes his hand clearly intending to lead him somewhere, but he digs his feet in,

  
“I can’t…” he squeezes her hand before crossing his arms, “Sorry, I have to be here when Abby and Raven are ready.”

  
Her shoulders drop slightly, “I spoke to Raven, she said it would be a few more hours at least.”

  
A few more hours?!

  
He’s not sure he can last that long having to listen to Josephine try to convince him to let her keep Clarke’s body.

  
As if she were a nice jacket and not a living, breathing person.

  
“Raven could be overestimating,” he argues, “You know how she always thinks something will take hours and then has a breakthrough when we’re least prepared for it.”

  
Echo sighs, “Can we at least…” she breaks off but gestures a few feet down the corridor, so they were at least out of Diyoza and Octavia’s immediate earshot.

  
He can already tell by the way she’s not quite meeting his eyes that something is wrong and whatever it is, he hopes that they can either find a solution quickly or that someone else can deal with it.

  
“What’s up?” he prompts when she doesn’t begin and she drops her chin,

“What’s up,” she echoes, her mouth twisting in a pained smile, “Those are the first words you’ve spoken to me in over ten days that weren’t about Clarke.”

  
Clarke.

He turns to glance over his shoulder briefly, as if he could see through the metal walls and determine that Clarke’s body was still unharmed before he focused back on her.

  
“Well…” he sighs, running a hand over his face, “It’s been a rough time Echo, we barely avoided a war, we had to build a camp in the middle of nowhere and build alliances with people who don’t trust us.”

“Wanheda is the reason we avoided a war,” she argues, “Miller, Jordan and Raven were built the camp and Octavia built the alliance with the Children of Gabriel. You spent your days planning to get Clarke back and watching Madi.”

  
Reflexively, he digs into the recesses of his mind and brings up his memories of the last two weeks since leaving Sanctum. They’d been rough days, where he’d been exhausted and unable to sleep, tired and full of frantic energy. He recalls that he’d barely spoken to anyone who wasn’t Madi, focusing all his energy and positive reinforcement on Clarke’s daughter, the rest of the time, he’d spent hiding himself away from people as he tried to figure out how to get Clarke back.

People had brought him food and water, Miller and Murphy had watched him but other than that, nobody had really approached him unless he was standing between them and Madi.

His head registers guilt at the same time as his heart burns with being treated unfairly, being accused of selfishness when he’d been trying to save their people for the umpteenth time.  

  
“And what, you want me to apologise for that?” he snaps, giving into his anger,

“For protecting our Commander while trying to get her mother back?”

“No…I…”

“You saw how Madi’s been without Clarke, and Wanheda?! She was terrorizing the people of Sanctum, not the Primes, not the guards but the innocent people. So yeah, I’ve been focused on getting her back not just for Madi’s sake but for everyone’s.”

“I am not asking you to apologise for taking care of Madi,” she assures him, her voice calm and somehow soothing his anger even while intensifying his guilt,

“That is who you are, you take care of others especially children but Bellamy, we’ve been sleeping in different tents and you didn’t say a word to me for ten days unless it was about Clarke and I don’t think you even noticed.”

  
She wasn’t wrong. He’d been on autopilot and hadn’t even noticed that he’d worn the same clothes for fives days until Murphy had brought him a clean outfit to change into.

  
“I haven’t spoken to Octavia either but she’s not exactly complaining.” He mutters bitterly, wishing they were still close enough to the door that his sister would hear him.

Time was, a comment like that would have been enough to provoke a shouting match between the two of them, one that would dredge up every resentment since their last argument and clear the air a few hours later.

  
“Bellamy.” Echo sighs his name like she’s disappointed in him and he feels their relationship slipping through his fingers and he doesn’t know how to grip it tightly enough for it to stay.

  
He’s lost so much recently, Monty, Harper, his relationship with his sister, the hope of a new beginning on Sanctum, he’d damn near had to add Clarke to that list.

He just wanted one thing to remain.

  
“What do you want?” he demands, running a hand over his face, “Do you want me to step back, to have someone else look after Madi and…Clarke, do you want me to come share a tent? Just…tell me.”

  
His voice breaks and Echo’s face reflects his pain. When she steps forward and lifts her hands to cradle his face, he knows it’s over.

  
“I would never ask you to make promises that you can’t keep. You are always going to put Clarke first, Octavia too, once you’ve forgiven her and Madi when she learns to rely on you. Bellamy, I understand but…being with you made me realise that I want someone who will put me first, someone who will make time for me in spite of everything going on around us.”

He wants to argue with her, to say that he could be the man she wants, the man she deserves but part of him already knows it’s a lie.

She brushes her dry lips against his cheek in silent farewell and leaves him standing there trying to catch the pieces of his shattering world.

* * *

  
Diyoza’s the one who brings him back.

  
A gentle hand on his shoulder and a sympathetic grin, “You doing okay?”

He sniffs and wipes the corner of his eyes, “Since when?”

She clicks her tongue, “Yeah, I’ll give you that one, come on…Josephine’s trying to goad us into an argument and I’m this close to sitting back and letting her piss off your sister.”  
  


He takes off down the hall, all too aware of his sister’s temper but when he swings back into the canteen it’s to find Octavia on the bench with the perfect posture he used to beg her to use when she was a teen and Josephine slumped against the far wall, Clarke’s arms crossed as she sulked.

  
“Everything okay in here?” he asks, eyeing them both suspiciously and Octavia’s placid, innocent expression doesn’t fool him for a second.

  
But Josephine is surprisingly silent, so he lets it go.

On the Ark, his first and second time, whenever he was hurting, he wanted to be alone, living with two women, one who couldn’t ever leave their room, solitude wasn’t something he allowed himself unless he was really upset.

Now…he finds his feet leading him to Clarke’s body, leaning against the wall and sliding down until he’s sitting next to it.

Josephine is still watching Octavia warily but when his sister gets up to stand beside Diyoza again, she leans her head closer to him, and it’s a sign of how exhausted he is that he can’t bring himself to shift away.

  
“Trouble in paradise?”

  
When his silence lasts a beat too long and she realises that he doesn’t know the idiom and sighs,

  
“Are you and your girlfriend having a fight?”

  
He swallows past the pain in his throat, he doesn’t want to discuss this with Josephine but right now, she’s the closest he can get to Clarke and just being beside her body is enough to draw his emotions to the surface. “I don’t have a girlfriend,” he chokes, “Not anymore.”

  
Josephine grimaces in sympathy, “Relationship problems, I know those all too well.”

  
She shifts so that Clarke’s legs are crossed, and her hands are in her lap,

  
“I’ve been in love with Gabriel for two hundred and thirty years, the last seventy of which he’s wanted me dead.”

  
At least Echo had never wanted him dead.

While they’d been dating.

  
“Why’d you two break up?” she asks, her voice light and hopeful.

“Oh come on,” she urges when he only gives her a filthy look in response,

“We’re both trapped here for however long it takes Raven et al, to figure out the mind drive removal and I know you don’t want to listen to me complain about Clarke’s beauty regimen, or lack of, so it’s this or silence.”

“Silence works.” He grunts, wrapping his arms around his knees.

“Not for me,” She sings, and when he doesn’t respond she inhales theatrically,

“Okay, so Clarke’s leg hair I kind of get, I mean why walk around in leather pants if you don’t have someone to take them off for? But you know, apocalypse and all, shaving your legs takes time but what I don’t get is why she hasn’t shaved her…”

“Echo broke up with me because she thought I was too focused on getting Clarke back.” He blurts out, speaking over her until she falls silent.

She snorts, “Considering Clarke had her body hijacked and her daughter is your glorious leader, I would say that’s a bit unfair,”

“I’m a high-maintenance lover with the best of them,” she continues, “And even I know when to take a back seat to the drama.”

  
He knows that he had been searching for validation, in the form of Josephine’s criticism but hearing her support him, condemn Echo for being selfish feels like a sucker-punch to the stomach.

  
“She’s not wrong,” he interjects, “I could have made time for her. We’re always in the middle of chaos, if I used that as an excuse, I wouldn’t have any friends.”

“So then why didn’t you make time for her?” Josephine asks, reaching up to twirl her finger through Clarke’s hair.

“I don’t…” he swallows, pressing a hand to his chest as if he could rub away the pain, he was feeling there.

“I don’t know,” he admits, “I guess I got lost?”

“Maybe you’re just a bad person?” she suggests and he’s about to argue that she’s not one to talk when he’s cut off by a piercing shriek.

  
Beside him, Josephine is grabbing Clarke’s head, curling in on herself as she trembles and a quick glance to his sister has her running for Abby.

She’s crying out in pain and distress and Bellamy doesn’t know what to do.

He hates feeling so helpless.

  
“Hey,” he cries, putting a hand on her shoulder which causes her to flinch away, “Tell me what’s wrong!”

  
She’s sobbing so he can’t immediately make out what she said until she grabs his hand, squeezing it frantically between hers,

  
“I’m sorry,” she pants, “I’m sorry…Bellamy, you have to forgive me!”

  
He didn’t understand what was happening, but Clarke’s shoulders are tensing up, bracing for another wave of pain and he would do anything to prevent that.

  
“Okay,” he agrees, nodding quickly, “Okay, I forgive you.”

  
Josephine waits a heart-stopping moment, still braced for another wave of pain before she heaves a sigh of relief, slumping to the floor, sweat beading on Clarke’s forehead and he crouches over her, not even looking up when Octavia came in with Abby on her heels.

Clarke’s eyes are closed, and he slides an arm around her back, helping her stand and make her way over to the bench, her feet dragging, and Octavia helps him hold her up as Abby begins an examination.

  
“I’m fine,” Josephine mumbles, eyes still closed until Abby begins taking Clarke’s pulse.

“I’m fine…” she protests, shaking her off, “Clarke just…well, she wasn’t happy I attacked Bellamy.”

  
Abby’s eyes briefly scan him, searching for physical injuries and when she sees nothing immediately life threatening, he sees a glimmer of regret before she turns back to examining her daughter’s body.

He touches her elbow as he stands up so that she knows he doesn’t hold it against her.

He just lost his relationship of three years for the same reason.

  
“It’s a good thing I was on my way here anyway,” Abby announces, putting her penlight back in her pocket,

“We’re ready to extract the mind drive.”

  
Josephine recoils slightly, eyes darting about the room as if expecting somebody to step in and save her.

Nobody moves.

  
“I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t throw a damn parade,” She snarks, swaying slightly as she gets to her feet,

“Well…let’s do this then.”

* * *

  
Josephine maintains her brave façade as they walk through the hallways, it’s not until they reach medical that Bellamy sees Clarke’s hands trembling.

It doesn’t help that when Abby said they were ready, she had lied.

Jackson and Niylah were still prepping the instrument tray and Raven was setting up the computer she would be using to monitor the device.

Which meant Josephine had to stand and wait, watching them as they eagerly prepared to end her current life cycle. 

Even after everything she’d done to them, Bellamy could feel a stab of sympathy.

  
“It’ll be painless.” he tells her, not sure whether that’s true but figuring the lie couldn’t hurt.

  
She snorts and crosses Clarke’s arms to hide her hands.

  
“Gabriel’s not even here,” she mutters, “Coward couldn’t even come to see me when I was closer to him than I have been in…almost a century.”

  
Jackson joins Abby to begin scrubbing up and Bellamy finds himself shifting on his feet, trying to hide his anticipation and the hope rising up within him.

Clarke would be back soon.

He should go see Madi, let her know they were about to begin.

  
“Bellamy,” Josephine reaches out and catches his elbow as he turned to leave,

“If I’m about to be put on ice for…who knows how long, there’s something you should know,”

“Don’t worry,” she adds when his eyes go wide and the blood drains from his face, “It’s not bad, I don’t think.”

  
That didn’t abate the rising terror within him at all.

  
“It’s just,” she clicks Clarke’s tongue, “In our two centuries together, Gabriel’s never looked at me the way you look at Clarke, he’s never showed me the same devotion you show her; and I didn’t know it was possible for her to come after me when I was in control of her body, but when I hurt you she would have killed us both to make me stop.”

She punctuated her sentence with an eye roll, “There, my one good deed of the day.”

  
Probably the only good deed she’d committed in decades.

And she didn’t even seem to realise that she had shaken his world to its core.

Niylah ushers Josephine to the table and she hops on with feigned energy, smirking as she lays down.

  
“Don’t worry,” she declares as Jackson administers the anaesthesia,

“You haven’t seen the last of me.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of miscommunication and angst this chapter I'm afraid.

  
Clarke had never gone swimming.

Many people had offered to teach her how.

Lincoln, Niylah, Roan- all of them bewildered at the idea that no member of Skai-kru knew how to swim.

Every time she had declined because there had always been something more pressing to do and she’d always thought she would have more time. 

  
Then Praimfaya had hit.

  
Madi had tried to teach Clarke to swim as well, except that at six years old, Madi hadn’t so much swum as she had paddled and flopped around in the water until she got where she needed to go.

Clarke had tried to mimic her actions but couldn’t handle the sensation of her mouth being just below the waterline and how easy it seemed to sink.

She’d decided that she would just avoid swimming.

It took her awhile to realise that what kept her from the deeper waters wasn’t some irrational fear of drowning.

It was because of her escape from Mt Weather.

  
How she’d followed Anya over that waterfall to avoid being captured and hit the water so hard it felt like she’d broken every bone in her body. Surprised by the impact, her mouth had fallen open.

Her hair had tangled in front of her eyes leaving her blind and her lack of training meant she hadn’t known how to reach the surface. Not that she could have anyway, she’d been caught up in the current and tossed around like a ragdoll.

She had been sure she was going to die.

She doesn’t so much remember losing consciousness so much as she just knows that one moment she was drowning and the next she was vomiting water on the rocky bank with blanks in between.

Later when she was back in the Dropship, waking up after the head wound, a part of her brain noted the strange sensation of regaining consciousness and told her that was what it had felt like to break the surface of the water.

She’d hoped to never have a repeat performance.

  
But here she was again being drawn up as she struggled to open her eyes and catching brief glimpses of blinding light through her eyelashes before she fell back into the darkness.  
  


She’s not sure how many times this happened before she could finally open her eyes and blink without losing time. Her vision was blurry and her mouth was dry, she moaned at the pain in the back of her neck and wondered if she should try to move her body.

She starts by wriggling her toes and noting that there was something on her feet that didn’t feel like her socks and boots. She wriggles her toes again and there’s movement on her right side, her hand being lifted and squeezed by a rough skinned palm.

  
_Bellamy._

  
“Clarke,” he whispers, and she swallows as she tries to turn her head to face him,

“Hey, you’re okay you’re safe.”

  
Safe.

That was nice.

She was safe.

_  
Madi._

  
She inhales sharply choking on air and struggles to push herself up onto her elbows. Around her machines are beeping and she can make out the sterile metallic colours of the med bay.

Everything is still blurry but slowly coming into focus.

Bellamy is repeating her name interspersing it with pleas to calm down but she can’t until she knows that…

  
“I’m here!”

  
Madi’s voice is loud as she runs into the bay and her smaller hand is sweaty as she grips Clarke’s larger one but the mere fact that she can speak and move has Clarke feeling dizzy with relief.

And possibly remnants of the anaesthetic.  

  
“I’m sorry,” she apologised, leaning over until her stomach presses their interlinked hands into the bed and her face appears in Clarke’s vision, her hair falling down over her shoulders to tickle Clarke’s bare arms.

“I wanted to be here when you woke up, but Xavier needed to talk to me about taking a message back for Gabriel and Bellamy wouldn’t let me do it in here.”

“Because she kept getting distracted,” the accused party argues, his voice rough with exhaustion yet carrying hints of amusement and affection,

“She wouldn’t take her eyes off you for a second and would have agreed to anything he said without thinking about it.”

Madi’s face twists in an ugly scowl at the betrayal, “ _He_ hasn’t left since the surgery began,” she reveals,

“If Miller hadn’t been bringing him food and water, he’d have needed medical treatment himself.”

“It’s been less than twelve hours,” he rushes to reassure Clarke as her heartrate picks up again,

“I’m fine.”

  
Clarke lifts her head slightly wanting to see the room which causes both Madi and Bellamy to reach behind her, adjusting the bed so she could lie at an angle.

She swallows and Bellamy glances down at her hands, both still being clasped and she can see his train of thought, the way he chooses to be the one to go get her water.

Meanwhile, Madi is staring into her eyes with the intensity of a child for whom Clarke had been her whole world.

  
“Are you okay?” she asks, squeezing her hand and Clarke gives her a weak smile,

“I’m a little sore,” she admits, “But I’ll be fine.”

  
Bellamy returns and makes her hold the cup in her hand which annoys her slightly because it costs her more energy than if he’d just held the back of her neck and supported her.

Perhaps it would take time for them to get back to that level of casual comfort with each other.

The water soothes her throat and she hands Bellamy the cup before settling back down. She was tired and slightly disoriented and the thought falling back asleep is seductive.

But Bellamy and Madi had been holding vigil by her bedside for hours and it wouldn’t be fair to spend only a few minutes with them after all that. She casts her mind about for something to say which is slightly difficult because she was still under the affects of the anaesthetic.

  
“Did you get to enjoy the rest of the celebrations?” she asks, directing the question at Madi and expecting a passionate response about the food and activities that would allow her to rest while still interacting with her family.

Madi frowns and tilts her head, a reaction that Clarke recognises as confusion and she blinks rapidly, trying to clear some of the wool from her head.

  
“I…” Madi breaks off and glances at Bellamy who takes her hand again, waiting as she turns her head to face him.

“Clarke…” he begins, quietly clearing his throat, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  
It didn’t matter how gently someone phrased that question; it wasn’t something anyone wanted to be asked.

Ever.

She tries to get a handle on her rising panic even as her eyes dart across his face searching frantically for signs that he’s aged since she saw him last.

  
“Cillian shot me with a paralytic dart,” she recalled, “The guards stopped him from kidnapping me.”

  
Bellamy looks over her to Madi, and even though she’s not the one meant to be reading his expression, she knows him well enough to be able to see the confusion and consternation in his eyes.

  
“How long…” she pauses when she realises that she doesn’t even know what to ask.

“What happened?”

  
To their credit, Bellamy and Madi try to soften the blow as much as possible while still giving her the full story. Several times they’re caught short as they struggle to find the right words to express just how bad everything had got without scaring her.

The only problem was that Clarke had lost days of her life to Josephine Lightbourne and then nearly two weeks to Wanheda and didn’t even have gaps where those memories should be.

  
She had supposedly reached into her subconscious, pulled out the darkest parts of her and then surrendered control of her body to them.

She had made that deliberate decision and had no idea why or how she could have done that.

Turning her attention to Madi, she studies her child for signs of trauma, an inability to meet her eye.

Any evidence that she was afraid of her now.

  
Madi reaches up and brushes her hair out of her face, “You need to wash,” she declares with the innocence straightforwardness of a child raised in peace, “You smell like _them_.”

Her confusion must be apparent because Bellamy draws her attention back to him, “The Primes,” he clarifies, “You must have used their toiletries.”

  
Well they’d used her body, so their possessions were fair game.

  
“Soon as I’m discharged, we’ll go bathing,” she promised Madi before remembering that going in the water was what had damn near killed Murphy.

“Somewhere safe.” She adds but Madi’s already perked up with excitement.

“I’ll go ask Xavier for a map or something,” she declares, stretching up to press a kiss to her cheek before bounding from the room.

“Ai hod yu in, Clarke!” she shouts as she disappears into the hallway bringing a smile to Clarke’s face despite her exhaustion.

  
Her right hand twitches on the blanket covering her body and she can sense Bellamy hesitating before he reaches down to clasp it between his hands.

He hasn’t looked her in the eye since she woke up and that slices into her skin like a blade.

  
“Are you okay?” she asks, feeling her heart sink as he sets his gaze on the bed and not on her,

“I’m not the one who just had surgery after my body got hijacked, Princess.” He points out, the corner of his mouth tilting up, but she doesn’t allow the deflection.

“You were the one that dealt with Wanheda though,” she guesses, “Weren’t you?”

  
His eyes don’t widen in surprise, but she still sees his eyelids flicker as he tries to hide his tell.

  
“I thought you didn’t remember anything?” he says, not exactly accusing but prompting as if trying to uncover the truth. He suspects her of having lied to Madi but not to him.

  
_Never_ to him.

  
She gives a small shrug of her shoulders, “I don’t,” she admits, “But I do know you, Bellamy. You would have done your best to protect Madi and nobody else would have volunteered to watch me.”

Not even her own mother.

Part of her, the part that still stings from all the ways Abby has failed her, wonders how long it would have taken her own mother to realise that her body had been hijacked?

Had she noticed, had someone told her, or had she gone looking for Clarke to assist with Kane’s surgery and only then realised?

But Clarke shouldn’t go asking questions she doesn’t want to know the answer to.

Like if anybody besides Bellamy or Madi had cared that she’d died.

Raven and Murphy had probably thrown a party to celebrate.

  
She clears her throat to try and cover the pain that the truth elicited from her.

Right now, there’s only one question she needs the answer to.

  
“Did she hurt you?”

  
Her voice had died part way through asking, as if trying to shield her from the truth but Bellamy still manages to understand because he shakes his head,

  
“She didn’t hurt me,” he promises, his voice warm, “She actually tried to be nice to me…in her own way.”

  
Even the darkest parts of Clarke’s subconscious cared for Bellamy Blake.

She’d like to pretend that she’s surprised but she’s never allowed herself that level of denial.

Especially not after she’d called him every day for six years.

But whether it’s exhaustion, fear or maybe even vanity, she doesn’t want to confront her feelings for him when she’s lying in the surgery, still woozy from the drugs they’d given her.

  
“Still,” she casts about for something to discuss, “It can’t have been easy.”

Bellamy ducks his head, the corners of his mouth twitching, “Are you really trying to comfort me right now, Princess?”

  
Even after all these years, she thrills at the nickname, even as she knows she shouldn’t, even as she knows that the man before her loves someone else.

The knowledge tears her heart to shreds, but she smiles through the pain because what other choice does she have? To lose her best friend. To hurt someone innocent. To once again be the other woman? 

  
“If it means avoiding my own issues,” she jokes, “Tell me how you’re feeling Bellamy.”

“Honestly?” he says, grinning and squeezing her hand, “Glad you’re back…”

“Because there is so much to do,” he adds theatrically and she laughs, “We’re building a camp and trying to wake everyone up without causing chaos, oh and we have an alliance with the Children of Gabriel that somebody will have to negotiate into a lasting peace…”

  
She rolls her eyes and drops her head back against her pillow, groaning at the knowledge that he was probably only half-joking about the long list they had to work through before they could start to call themselves safe.

Before they could hope to find peace.

She runs her thumb over his skin, brushing over an old scar and when he tenses, she repeats the motion pressing a little harder to search for a broken bone or injury that he was hiding from her.

When his body doesn’t reveal his secrets, she looks back into his eyes.

There’s pain there, hidden behind a tumult of other emotions but not since their days at the Dropship has he been able to hide his pain from her.

She murmurs his name as softly as possible, a quiet reminder that he’s safe with her, that she cares about his feelings and wants him to be okay.

He’s staring at her and she waits patiently for him to speak, so focused on his eyes that she doesn’t even notice his free hand moving up the bed until he’s brushing her hair back from her face. His callused palm scratches her cheek pleasantly and despite her best efforts, her body betrays her, her eyelids flutter closed, and she leans into his touch.

Even at their worst, being held by him had made her feel safe.

So she doesn’t react when she senses him moving, assuming that he’s shifting his position or adjusting the pillows under her head, still caught up in the warmth of his hand on her cheek.

Until she feels the warmth of his lips on hers.

  
Even before her brain had registered that he’s kissing her she knows that it’s wrong, that what they’re doing is wrong for a myriad of reasons. But the selfish part of her overrides her conscience, tells her to shut up and enjoy this stolen moment.

Her lips seem to part on their own volition and Bellamy deepens the kiss, using his hand to tilt her head back to a better angle and Clarke can’t bring herself to care about all the ways she’s being the bad guy because Bellamy’s touch sends electric sparks dancing across her skin and makes her insides melt.

She struggles not to smile against his lips.

But then she feels a depression in the pillows beside her head and Bellamy’s chest is brushing against her breasts and the sense of burning shame that had torn her apart when she realised that she’d given her virginity to a boy who had a girlfriend comes flaring back.

Enough to break her out of her stupor, enough for her to lift her hands to his shoulders and use the leverage to push him away.

  
“No,” she mumbles, when there’s enough space between them for her to speak without her lips brushing his and the pain in his eyes has her dropping her gaze, using the sight of their bodies so close together to strengthen her resolve.

“Clarke.” he whispers, his thumb reaching up to stroke her brow and she flinches away from his touch,

“This is wrong, Bellamy!” she protests earnestly, “You know this.”

  
He reels back and looks at her as if he doesn’t recognise her, as if he’s expecting someone else behind those eyes that isn’t supposed to be there.

Is this how he’d looked at Josephine?

  
“I thought…” he breaks off, running a free hand through his hair, slumping off the bed and back into the chair as his eyes darted about the room landing on everything but her,

“Clarke, I thought that you…”

  
That she loved him? Of course, she did, with every inch of her body and every part of her soul, but that didn’t change how wrong it was.

  
“You’re confused,” she tells him, offering him a way out, “Everything that’s happened over the last month would have been hard on anybody, but Bellamy…Echo loves you.”

He sticks his hands in his pockets and ducks his head, “Actually she doesn’t…she ended things with me because of my feelings for you.”

 

There was a time, back on Earth, shortly after their reunion that she would have loved to hear those words. When she was bitter that her friends had moved on, that Bellamy had forgot to mention his relationship with the woman who would have killed them all despite her king’s fondness for her.

When her neck had still ached from Echo’s attempts to strangle her in front of her child.

Now, she feels a rush of resentment burning through her like Praimfiya had.

Of course it was her fault.

It was _always_ her fault.

Place the blame on Clarke, on Wanheda so everyone else could walk around with their clear conscience, unburned souls and self-righteous judgement of her actions.

She had thought that out of everyone, Bellamy would be the one person to _never_ do that to her.

He was supposed to have been different.

 

Echo broke up with him because of her. Everyone would hate her more than they already did and it would once again be Madi and her against the world.

Except that this isolation wasn’t fair on her daughter.

She would have to push Madi away, let Gaia take her place so that she didn’t become cursed by association.

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly and softly, trying to centre herself even as her mind kept racing ahead, creating potential scenarios and trying to determine the outcome.

It was exhausting being her sometimes.

Most of the time, if she was being honest.

  
“Clarke,” Bellamy whispers her name, “Please talk to me.”

  
And say what?

For the first time, she didn’t know what to say to Bellamy to bridge the distance between them, not when she’s busy trying to figure out how everyone would react to her latest crime against them. 

  
“We were supposed to do better this time,” she mutters bitterly, “But we’re just making the same mistakes over and over again hoping that the outcome will be different.”

“We did do better,” he interjects but she turns her face away, “Clarke…”

“I’m tired, Bellamy,” she interrupts, “I need to rest.”

  
She can feel the tension rolling off him in waves, the readiness to stay and fight but then he exhales through his nose. She closes her eyes as his dry lips press against her cheek,

  
“I do love you, Princess.”

When he’s gone, she presses her lips together and forcibly swallows her sob, her vision blurring with tears that cascade down her cheeks.  
  



	7. Chapter 7

Not even an hour after Bellamy left, Octavia burst into the med bay in a whirlwind of determined energy that had Clarke sitting up in concern that she’d come to avenge her brother.

But there’s a smile on her face that belies Clarke’s immediate fears.

  
“Diyoza’s in labour!” she announces excitedly before disappearing again and Clarke eases herself from the bed, moving slowly and glad that she’s already dressed so she wouldn’t have to make any strenuous movements.

  
She feels groggy, sore and nauseous.

When Jackson, Niylah and her mom hurry in, she doesn’t even offer to help.

She can’t, she can’t remember the right words.

People arrive and…she blinks and finds herself in the hallway, leaning against the wall with Indra standing before her glaring like she’s in trouble.

Maybe she is.

You can never quite tell with Indra.  

  
“Come,” she beckons, “I shall take you to the Commander.”

“Madi,” Clarke corrects stubbornly, even as she can taste bile in the back of her throat, she’ll forget her own name before she allows herself to forget her daughter,

“My child.”

  
Indra allows this to slide as she slips an arm under her shoulders and supports her unsteady feet down the ramp and outside.

The suns momentarily blind her, and she tilts her head back to enjoy the warmth on her face, taking deep breaths to fill her lungs with fresh air.

The taste of freedom, the taste of life.

It makes her dizzy and she sways, struggling to slur Indra’s name and another grounder is called to help her, a strong arm gripping her around her back and she fights to keep her eyes open as she is carried away from the sunlight.

  
“Clarke…?”

Madi.

She sounded frightened.

A burst of adrenaline gets her eyes open and she forces herself to straighten up, to try and shake off the hands holding her in place.

  
“She is alright, heda,” Gaia’s soothing voice reaches her ears, “As Abby said, she merely needs to rest.”

  
There are spots dancing across her vision, and she groans in annoyance, blinking rapidly to clear them as she’s settled into a sitting position and someone begins tilting her sideways. Something warm is draped over her and a gentle hand pushes her hair back from her face,

  
“Don’t worry, Clarke,” Madi tells her, her voice painfully loud in her ear, “I’ll take care of you.”

  
She’s sure that she’s smiling as she falls back asleep.

* * *

  
Bellamy wasn’t sure what he had been expecting when Clarke woke up.

In truth, he’d been so worried that as long as she was okay, he hadn’t cared.

Until he’d kissed her.

In that moment, he’d imagined long days beside her and hell, maybe even a night or two holding her in his arms.  

Nothing had ever felt as right as the sensation of his lips on hers.

But then…

He’d gone and screwed it up, just like he had every good thing in his life.

He hadn’t even realised just how badly until he’d come face to face with Raven and the puzzle pieces had slid into place.

The last thing Clarke had probably wanted to hear was that Echo had broken up with him over his feelings for her.

His only thought then had been to apologise to her, so he’d left Raven standing there shouting his name and a colourful stream of curses in both English and Trig and jogged as quickly as he could with his injured leg to the medical bay.

He’d walked in on Diyoza as her baby was beginning to crown.

That had given him a traumatic flashback to Octavia’s birth that had nearly sent him into a meltdown that hadn’t been helped by Diyoza shouting at him using words that would make Raven blush.

It’s Octavia who realises that he’s not standing there because he’s shocked but because he’s frozen in place and forces her hand free of Diyoza’s grip to usher him from the room.

  
“I am so glad I didn’t give her my right hand,” she groans, shaking out her red fingers, “If this takes much longer, she might break my thumb.”

  
Bellamy doesn’t respond, he’s still struggling to drown out the sound of his mother’s muffled cries and the stench of blood, shit and afterbirth stuck in his nose. He runs his hands through his hair and tries to stop shaking,

  
“I…came to see Clarke.” He gasps and Octavia steps back, her head tilted, and eyes narrowed as she analyses him.

“They kicked her out when Diyoza came in,” she reveals, “Indra took her somewhere.”

  
Indra did _what_ now?!

He tries not to panic but it’s a reflex that kicks in whenever he doesn’t know where Clarke is.

Which, considering her tendency to get into life-threatening situations, he considers to be understandable.

  
“She probably took her to find a tent,” Octavia theorised, “Or some place to rest until she could shift back in there.”

  
Speaking of…

They hear Diyoza practically scream for her and Octavia perks up,   
  
  
“I gotta get back in there,” she says, practically bubbling over with excitement, “I’ll come find you once everything’s…” she trails off, hurrying back inside and Bellamy wonders when the two women became so close.

  
How much had he missed in the last two weeks?

How much had he missed in those six years?

He heads to the centre of their camp and looks around, as if he’s going to spot Clarke’s distinctive blonde hair as she darted around like she had during the dropship days.

Part of him knows who he can go to for help finding Clarke, who probably already knows where she is because she still habitually collects information and secrets, unable to break the lifetime of training beaten into her by a despotic queen.

But he’s not desperate enough to cause Echo that pain…yet.

What he should be doing is seeking out Madi, asking her if she knows where Clarke is, but if she doesn’t then she’s likely to panic worse than him and she’s been through enough as it is without him having lost her mother again.

He should gather his people and start a search, and when he finds Clarke, he should put a tracking device on her so he knows where she is at all times and…

Despite his panic, his pulse starts to slow down and his mind begins to recover from the shock of having seen Diyoza giving birth and work logically again.

The heart and the head.

Clarke needed a place to rest and they didn’t have tents spare at the moment, her mother shared a tent with Jackson and Miller and their tent wasn’t really big enough to house someone recovering from surgery.

But the commander’s tent was.

His suspicions are confirmed when he tries to enter Madi’s tent and finds the guards blocking his way.

  
“Heda’s orders,” Tris explains to him, “No-one is to disturb Wanheda while she rests.”

  
He wants to argue that he’s not just anybody, that he sat beside Clarke’s bed and refused to move while she was recovering from surgery, that he was the reason they’d managed to bring her back in the first place.

But he realises that he would be arguing his right to wake Clarke up as she tried to recover from invasive surgery and days of her life lost to possession by two different psychopaths.

So instead, he settles for leaving a message and promising that he’d come back later.

* * *

  
Her first month living in the Valley, Clarke had still been feeling the effects of the radiation polluting her body and the emotional turmoil of everything that had happened to her. She’d gone to bed early one night and been too nauseous to move the next day.

After three days, Madi had crept up on her, poked her with her spear to check she was still alive and brought her a shallow bowl of water and a recently caught fish.

That was how she’d learnt that Madi had been eating her catches raw.

Clarke hadn’t had much maternal instinct but had managed to force herself out of bed and build a fire to show Madi that fish were meant to be gutted and cooked first.

She’d fallen asleep by the embers and woken up with her face in the dirt and a jacket draped over her body.

Now, Madi wakes her in the morning for breakfast and will make her get up and wash her face and hands before eating, she brushes her hair for her and tucks her back into bed, promising that she’ll be safe and looked after.

She’s right about the first part.

Madi left two guards outside with strict orders to protect her and help her.

But when she called for help and both of them lumbered inside, she realised pretty quickly that they wouldn’t be able to help her.

They could barely bring themselves to touch her without flinching.

It was easier to just let them keep her safe, which meant staying outside, away from Wanheda.

Besides, she didn’t need to move much anyway.

For the first time she can remember since touching the ground, she wasn’t spending her every waking moment being needed.

At the end of the day, Madi would ask her opinion on the decisions that had to be made, the best way to build a village for their people and she gave her input, but otherwise…

She could rest.

Or try to anyway.

When she’s recovered enough to enjoy coherent thought, one of the first things Clarke realises, is that she actually missed being ignored by her friends.

Hours when they refused to speak to her, to even look at her or in any way acknowledge her existence.

Now, every morning she has to listen to them shouting.

One after the other, arguing, yelling, fighting with the guards Madi ordered to keep everyone out.

She hears them call her name demandingly and either rolls over in bed or covers her ears with her blanket.

When Miller- always the last one- leaves, she knows she has a full twenty-hour hours before she has to hear them again.

Before she has to ignore them again.

Maybe she’s being cruel, or maybe, they just want to drag her out of her solitude so they can once again hate her for being the bad guy.

For making the wrong choices.

For not being able to save them all.  

And if that was the case, they could wait until she was feeling better.

Her resolve doesn’t falter until she receives a new caller.

She hears the words Natrona and Azgeda spy hissed by her guards before she hears Echo call her name, raising her voice just enough to ensure it would carry into the tent.

She doesn’t call back, but she does push herself up and does her best not to tumble off the bed.

She deliberately makes enough noise to indicate that she’s moving and when she parts the tent flaps, she’s greeted by Echo’s smirk of satisfaction and two nonplussed guards.

  
“Shall we take a walk?” she suggests, “Get you some fresh air?”

  
That did actually sound nice.

  
“Ens ogud,” she tells the guards, “I’ll be back later.”

  
They both looked disgruntled but neither of them would be willing to tell her no or try to physically stop her.

Echo sets off at a brisk pace, making it six steps before stopping and turning back, realising that Clarke couldn’t keep up with her. Her legs felt a little unsteady at first, but she recovered and soon they were managing a relaxed amble.

Clarke made a point not to notice all the people that were watching as they walked past.

  
“There was a rumour that you had died during the surgery,” Echo tells her as they move to a quiet part of the camp where the ground was being tilled for farming,

“And that Madi was hiding your death to prevent challenges to her reign.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” she quipped, blinking against the bright light and feeling grateful when they took a seat on the purple grass.

“Are there any threats against her?”

Echo shook her head, “Not really, but people were worried when they saw how close Octavia and Diyoza have become.”

  
Diyoza had only given birth four days ago, from what Clarke knew about childbirth, she figured a coup was probably the last thing on the woman’s mind.

She hoped that if Madi was worried she would come to her to talk about it, however if Gaia became concerned, she would seek her out.

They were connected by their desire to keep Madi safe.

  
“That’s not why I came to see you,” Echo begins, drawing her back and Clarke tried to smother the discomfort roiling in her stomach and burning in her cheeks.

  
She could handle negotiating the fate of hundreds of people, she could threaten war and devastation, but she didn’t know how to face conversations like the one they were about to have.

  
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out before the other woman can even speak, “I never meant to come between you and Bellamy.”

  
Echo’s jaw drops in clear surprise, but she recovers quickly,

  
“I know,” she answers, “Just like I never meant to come between the two of you.”

“I was going to ease into this,” she continues, with a wry smile, “I was going to begin by asking you to stop ignoring our friends, even if your actions are somewhat justified.”

Despite everything, Clarke smirks in amusement, “Would you believe that I was actually resting?”

  
A quirk of the eyebrow answered that question for her.

She sighs and drops her head, studying the purple grass beneath her while she tried to gather her thoughts,

  
“I’m just…I’m _tired_ ,” she admits, stumbling over the words as the realisation is borne in her mind,

“I’m tired of carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders, I’m tired of bearing their sins and having them hate me for it, I’m tired of being the bad guy and I just…want to rest.”  
  


Cautiously, as if fearing rejection, Echo reaches across and places a tentative hand on Clarke’s shoulder,

  
“I know it’s hard on you…” she begins but Clarke has heard that same sentiment too many times only for it to be followed by the demand that she put herself back together and do what she’s always done.

“Do you?” she asks, “Do you get how exhausting it is? That even when Josephine was in control of my body, I had to save myself and our people, that I can’t even rest for five days without them trying to force their way into my tent so that I can validate all the ways they wronged me… _again_!”

“It’s not fair,” Echo interjects quickly, “I can get that at least, but Clarke if you don’t lead our people, the burden falls on Bellamy and Madi and I know you don’t want that to happen.”

She gave a sharp shrug, “If Bellamy didn’t want to carry the burden alone, he shouldn’t have lost you.”

“Now you are being cruel.”

“Not to me,” she adds, when she goes to apologise, “But to Bellamy.”

“If he had been able to control his feelings for you, he would have done so long before now,” She surmises, “And perhaps he would have suffered less than he has.”

“Echo…I…”

“This is why you need to come back Clarke,” she continued, speaking over her in clipped tones,   
  
“Because I shouldn’t have to seek you out and make you feel better about the end of my relationship. Because Bellamy shouldn’t have to stay up all night trying to figure out what you would do in the negotiations. Because our people want your forgiveness and to know that everything will be okay and only you can give that to them.”

She drew her hand back and Clarke missed the warmth against her shoulder, “It’s not fair but few things in this life are.”

  
Echo doesn’t storm off, she doesn’t leave her to sit there wallowing in her own guilt and shame, she waits patiently until Clarke can get back onto her feet and then leads her beyond the farming area to show her where Jordan was trying to grow a flower garden.

  
“He wants to memorialise our dead,” she explains as Clarke tries to swallow the lump in her throat,

“He says it brings him comfort.”

  
Comfort that Clarke had failed to provide him is the unspoken condemnation. Not only was she failing those of her people still living, but the dead as well.

When she returned to the tent, she settled down at the small camp fire in front and waited for her people to seek her out.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The suns were high in the sky as Bellamy took a break from carting wood and walked across the camp.

At first, he’d made this walk with a clenched jaw and his fingers twitching with nervous energy.

Now, he barely even had to regulate his breathing or think about the lump in his throat.

Hell, maybe the fourteenth time would be the charm.

Maybe, this time, he’d be lucky and Clarke wouldn’t turn him away.

Lucky for the first time in his life.

He’s so caught up in his thoughts that he nearly walks into the large campfire that was kept burning day and night.

He course-corrects at the last second, so his boot doesn’t land in open flame but twists his bad leg and has to hurriedly sink down onto a log so that he doesn’t pass out from the pain.

Which is where Octavia finds him a few minutes later, her presence announced by an unending scream,  
  


“Oh, thank god!” she bursts out, appearing in his line of sight with a frantic expression on her face and raising her voice to be heard over the wails,

“Bell, I can’t make her stop!”

  
She’s holding out a bundle to him and he takes it reactively before looking down and seeing the caterwauling had been transferred to him.

  
“Why do you have a baby?!” he demands, barely able to hold the child in his shock.

“It’s Hope!” she cries, “I woke up and she was in my tent and Diyoza was gone and then Hope started screaming and I don’t know what to do!”

  
He adjusts his hold on her, tugging her closer to his chest and her eyes opened slightly as her bawling lessened, her red, splotchy face turning to him as she snuffled.

Octavia fell back onto her haunches with a sigh of relief,

  
“I thought she was going to injure herself.” She murmurs, running a hand through her hair.  

“Did Diyoza leave a note?” Bellamy asks, keeping his voice low and calm so she wouldn’t get riled up again.

  
Octavia’s face turns stormy and she holds out a torn piece of paper for him to bend and read.

  
‘ _Diyoza’s baby, Do Not Eat_ ’

  
“When she gets back from wherever she is, I’m going to kill her.” Octavia declares darkly but the threat rings hollow when she leans over Hope and offers her a finger to squeeze,

“Yes, I am,” she coos, making the baby gurgle, “I’m going to kill your mean mummy and keep you all to myself!”

“I didn’t break her right?” she asks quickly, and he shakes his head, fighting the smile crawling across his face,

“You didn’t break her, she just needed to calm down.”

“But I fed her and did all the things the book said.”

“We have books on child-rearing?” he enquires, surprised because he thought he had an in-depth knowledge of the six books that had managed to survive the Ark crashing, the systems being wiped in Praimfiya and the destruction of the Earth.

Octavia merely shrugged, “Sanctum did, and the night we attacked, I helped myself to their library on the way out.”

“You looted a library?” he cries, causing Hope to whimper and he shushes her, bouncing her gently to calm her back down.

“Well it’s not like I burnt it to the ground and set the sum of human knowledge back centuries.” She hissed, keeping her voice low so as to not upset the baby.

“Oh well, congratulations for doing better than the Ancient Romans.”

  
They stared at each other for an incredulous second before she shoved him as roughly as she could while he was holding a baby.

  
“Did I catch you on the way to or from the Commander’s tent?” she asks softly, and he grimaces,

  
“You caught me right after I nearly immolated myself.”

She snorted, “Willing to walk through fire for her, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Have you considered giving her time to heal first?” Octavia suggests, “You know, recover from well…everything that’s happened since we landed.”

“On Earth or on Sanctum?” he quipped and when she gave him a knowing look, he sighed,

“I screwed up, O, and I want to make it right, but I can’t do that if she won’t even let me see her.”

“Why is it all about you?” she asks, holding out her arms so he could ease Hope back into her embrace.

  
And even though her tone seems casual, the question hits right at the heart of his self-loathing.

The dark part of him that tells him he’s selfish, a screw-up, a monster that forced his confession and himself on Clarke when she had barely woken up from the surgery.

But before he could slide too deeply into that, Octavia nudges him with her elbow, bringing him back to the present,

  
“You’re not a bad person Bell,” she tells him, “Just…maybe let Clarke focus on herself for a little bit?

Bellamy ruffled her hair, making her wrinkle her nose in distaste, “When did you become so good at relationships?”

  
As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he wants to pull them back in because only a few short months- and a century ago- her answer would have caused them both pain.

But even though Lincoln’s ghost sits with them, it’s no longer as painful and Octavia can shrug off his memory with a wistful smile,

  
“After everything, being with Niylah has been good for me…” she trails off, looking down at Hope with a scheming glint in her eye, “I’m gonna…”

“Octavia,” he scolds as she shuffles off as quickly as she can while holding a fragile newborn, and he gets to his feet to limp after her.

“You cannot just dump a baby on Niylah!”

  
Octavia pivoted on her heel, her hair flying around her shoulders and the words ‘Watch me’ already forming on her lips before her eyes go wide and she jerks her chin,

  
“Hey look, it’s Clarke!”

Bellamy puts his hands on his hips, scoffing and shaking his head in disappointment, “Do you honestly think I’m gonna fall for that?”

“Fall for what?” a familiar voice called from his right shoulder and for just a moment, he loses the ability to breathe.

  
He turns around slowly because he’s not entirely certain that when he faces her he’ll be looking at Clarke and not one of their friends somehow impersonating her voice.

But there she is, right in front of him.

The corner of her mouth twitches upwards in amusement, her eyes glance over his shoulder, probably watching Octavia scurry off to ruin Niylah’s day.

  
“Do I want to know?” she asks, and he shakes his head depreciatingly,

“Sibling stuff.” He demurs before giving himself a moment to really see her.

  
She’s pale, carrying a faint smell of illness, with bags under her eyes and her hair is messy.

She reminds him of those days in the Dropship when they were recovering from Trikru’s biological warfare.

But her eyes are bright and clear.

And she’s still the most beautiful person that he’s ever seen.

Standing before him, probably waiting for him to speak.

He clears his throat, opens his mouth before he’s even finished thinking and somehow manages to interrupt her. They smile and he reads her eyes, seeing that she’s waiting for him to speak.

  
“Wanna take a walk?”

She nods, “Yeah.”

  
They fall in step, their movements close to synced as they always have been and he tries to keep an eye on her as he leads her just far enough away from the camp that they can expect privacy but not too far that they have to worry about the planet’s many dangers.

They reach a beach, possibly the one they found when they first arrived he can’t be entirely certain; and he picks a random spot on the sand for them to sit down.

It’s only midday and the heat of the suns already has perspiration forming under his shirt, but this doesn’t stop him from bending his knees so that Clarke can settle close enough to him that their arms are almost touching. And he wants nothing more than to reach out and draw her closer, hold her against him and tell her that he loves her.

He loops his hands around his knees to stop himself, hoping she can’t read the blatant desire holding him stiff.

She looks like she’s less of an emotional wreck than he is right now, except that she’s deliberately not making eye contact and he would bet anything that she’s planning out everything that she’s going to say.

He used to think that she handled him the way she did everyone else, it wasn’t until they got close enough that he realised she was walking a fine line between her desire to speak honestly and her fear of hurting him in any way.

  
“So, I’ve had some time to soul-search over the last few days,” she begins, “I think I figured out why…why I was gone for so long.”

  
He makes a noise to prompt her and she responds with a wry smile,

  
“I was being selfish,” she admits, “I…was tired and hurting and I knew that if I came back, I would have to save everyone and I just…didn’t have the strength to do it again.”

“That’s not selfish,” he protests automatically, and she gives him a knowing glance, seeing right through him.

“After everything,” he amends, “You’ve earned the right to step back, to let others carry the burden for a while.”

“It wasn’t fair to you or Madi,” she argues, her shoulders dropping, “By taking the weight of the world off my shoulders I was dropping it on both of you. And I knew that, I knew what I was doing and still allowed a subconscious part of me to be in control, to make more work for the both of you. How does that make me any better than our people who looked at us and demanded that we save them time and time again?”

  
She chokes on the last few words, turning her face away and wiping at her eyes and Bellamy’s resolve breaks. He can’t be sure she won’t reject him, but she’s in pain and he can’t bear it, so he shifts into a kneeling position and wraps his arms around her shoulders, holding her from behind while she took deep breaths.

  
“Clarke…?” he murmurs, only able to see her face at an angle but she reaches up and catches his forearm in a tight grip,

“Another thing I realised,” she says, sniffing, “Is it’s always going to be _us_ , Bellamy, you and me on the front lines because I can’t ever let Madi carry that burden alone. And one day, our people will trust Octavia to lead them again and our entire family will _always_ be the ones fighting…”

She twists herself so she can look into his eyes, “You told me you love me, but can you face that? Never being able to hide or give up because we can’t let what happened to us happen to Madi.”

  
Even now she was giving him a way out. He could say no, she would understand and wouldn’t hold it against him. He could walk away and make a life with someone who he could go home to at night who would let him leave his burdens at the door and rest. He could have a family the ran away from danger instead of towards it.

He’d made his choice a long time ago and the universe was finally letting him honour it.

This time, when his fingers brush her chin, she raises it up towards him,

  
“Together.” He swears, his lips barely an inch from hers.

“Together.” She agrees and kisses him, only to push him away seconds later and he’s trying to figure out how he misread the situation this time when turns so that she’s facing him and cups his cheek in her hand, 

“I love you,” she blurts out, “I just…I had to say it in case…”

  
In case something happened before she got the chance.

He nods and pulls her into an embrace, her chin finding his shoulder and his hands stroke her back until she’s stopped trembling and her breathing has evened out.

  
“I love you too,” he swears, pressing his cheek against hers, “So much.”

* * *

Even after they had finally admitted their love for one another, even though they could finally kiss and hold each other to their hearts content, they didn’t linger on the beach.

They couldn’t.

They knew that Madi had another meeting today with the Children of Gabriel and they should be there to offer their support and the experience they’d gained in the worst possible of ways.

They walk back to camp with their arms around each other until they’re in sight of others and she draws away,

  
“No need to rub it in,” she explains, “Not so soon after…”

  
After Echo had ended their relationship.

Bellamy knows that Echo is too smart to be surprised by him having finally acted on his feelings for Clarke but there was no need to publicly flaunt their love.

They also had Madi to consider, she’d just got her mother figure back and didn’t need anymore sudden changes in her life right now.

He settles for whispering that he loved her in her ear before they walk back to camp side by side and Clarke exhales as they reach the Commanders tent.

Raven, Murphy, Emori and Miller were huddled together by the fire, clearly waiting for her and he waits to see whether she needs him to support her or shield her. She meets his eyes and he’s nearly knocked back by the love and affection shining in them.

A deep breath and she steps forward, “Hi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. I enjoyed writing this and I'm surprised at the support I got for how I portrayed Wanheda. Last hiatus when everyone was speculating on clones, I would have loved to have seen a clone of Clarke become exclusively Wanheda and see how they would have fought that.


End file.
